World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various… from Snow by Louis MacNeice One of the things I love about this time of year is the contrast between the sweet [...]
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Mars in Gemini — in His Own Words
Mars, the planet of pepper and passion, is in the sign of Gemini for a very long time (20 August 2022 – 23 March 2023). The warrior is unbuckling her sword, laying down her shield and lying down by the campfire to trade stories for a long stretch too. In short the red planet is [...]
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Patterns on the Way
Astrology is the study of patterns. Patterns in the sky repeat as patterns in the soul, repeat as patterns on the Dao. Patterns on the way repeat every few years or decades or days or hours. Not all are lovely. But sometimes we have to repeat them for a while before we know how leave […]
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Salman Rushdie: Rebel, Story-teller, Gemini
Midnight’s Children — a tale of twins, mistaken identities, India and Pakistan, doubling and mirroring, knees and nose — catapulted its author, Salman Rushdie, a double Gemini, of course, to international fame in 1981. He did things with English that no one had read before [...]
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Brad Pitt’s Saturn Return Goes Neptunian
The second Saturn Return at around the age of 58 or 59 is a time when a chapter closes and a new door opens into what may be the final third of a person’s life. It’s as important as the one at 28, when real adult life begins and the first flush of youth is […]
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Kate Bush’s Surge
Kate Bush, visionary song-writer and performer, is being rediscovered by a whole new generation, thanks to the inclusion of her song Running Up That Hill in the TV series Stranger Things. For a person born with a Uranus-Sun conjunction in Leo, of course, nothing is strange, and anything can be [...]
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Paula Rego, Strong Women
“This is another thing that is not in our culture, which I show in the picture of the girl with her legs up, Lila.” Paula Rego, feminist, artist, storyteller died this week, leaving behind one of the most consistenly extraordinary and powerful bodies of work of the past 50 years. [...]
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The Podcast: The Material and the Immaterial
The podcast with Sally is up a little late this month, because I had no voice for a while. As you will hear, I’m only just getting it back. We had an interesting discussion about the Taurus-Scorpio axis, Jupiter going into Aries and more. Here’s a link to the home page where you [...]
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Iris Apfel, Rare Bird of Fashion
“Doing your own thing is very good… if you have a thing to do.” — Iris Apfel Playful, eccentric, glamorous, wry, Iris Apfel has an eye for the shiny, feathered, glittering, colourful thing. Her apartments in Palm Beach and New York City are eclectic bower-birds’ [...]
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Astrology of Now: Valentine’s Day
It is such a pleasure to be able to tell you what a wonderful planetary alignment we have for Valentine’s Day — for the first time in years! Venus and Mars, the lovers of the Solar System, embrace in earthy Capricorn, which means it’s certainly time for some of us to finally [...]
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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 [...]
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Adele’s Saturn
One thing’s certain about the singer Adele: she likes Saturn. At her one-night only special in Los Angeles the other day, she sported ginormous, dangly Saturn earrings, flashed a tattoo of the ringed planet on her right forearm, and was otherwise clad in black head to foot — [...]
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Astrology of Eris: Cultural Disruptor, Truth-Force
You know the story, but it bears repeating. The hero Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis had a magnificent wedding on Mount Olympus. Everyone was invited, except for the goddess Eris, or Discordia, as she’s known in Latin. Big mistake. Just to mess things up, Eris threw a golden apple [...]
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Libra: A Self-portrait and a Poem
II I am a far more deserving inventor than all those who went before me; a musician, in fact, who found something resembling the key of love. At present, a noble from a meager countryside with a dark sky I try to feel emotion over the memory of mendicant childhood, over my apprenticeship [...]
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Virgo Self-Portraits: Perfect Wits
David (30 August 1738) It will come as no surprise to see that the work of artists born under Virgo is consistently detailed, crafted, technically excellent and polished to a wonderful degree. Nor will it surprise you that all these painters could draw beautifully. Ingres (29 August 1780) [...]
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September Horoscopes & an Evening with Anne Whitaker
At the start of this month, we may have a little trouble focusing, as if our binoculars have one lens that sees far and one that only lets us see details. But as September lengthens to autumn, we can all gain perspective on what went before and what is to come. The cosmos is lending […]
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Virgo: A Self-portrait and Two Poems
for forty years the sheets of white paper have passed under my hands and I have tried to improve their peaceful emptiness putting down little curls little shafts of letters words little flames leaping not one page was less to me than fascinating Read the rest of the poem here — from [...]
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Leo Self-Portraits
Last month, I found a huge number of artists born under a Cancer Sun. It seems that Leos are less prone to pick up a paintbrush. I think a lot of them might find being in a studio all day too lonely. So no surprise then that possibly the most famous Leo artist of the […]
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