The Crimson Pirate: Sagittarius Rising Happy Birthday (and RIP, natürlich) Burt Lancaster, superstar Scorp. Was there ever a more robust yet complex specimen of manhood. Born 2 November 1913: Scorpio Sun (water), Capricorn Moon (earth), Sagittarius Rising (fire). Trapeze with Tony Curtis [...]

Imagine you are…Classical Lady by John William Godward OK, we are back in Rome, sometime in the 2nd century AD. It’s autumn, the grape harvest is in. We’ve all been celebrating in perhaps too Dionysian a fashion. Imagine that you are a togaed Roman with time and money on your [...]

Sylvia Plath was not the only poet born under Scorpio to be drawn to death’s glamour (see my previous post). Here is an extract from Ode To A Nightingale by John Keats (born October 30). … Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d [...]

Autumn, A Wood Path Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday: Sun Scorpio, Moon Libra, Aquarius Rising. (b. October 27, 1932) A real Scorpio has to find the authentic experience. A real Scorpio has to dive deep and come back again, transformed. Death is a [...]

Suzanne Valadon (23 Sept 1865) Theoretically, there’s nothing more revealing of character than a self-portrait, yet this month’s artists don’t do that straightforwardly. Their own faces blend into the backgrounds of the pictures, becoming simply part of the motif. Compare [...]

Unspecified Mark Rothko (September 25,1903)  Sun, Mercury and North Node in Libra.  Is one expression of Libra the erasure of ego? A reflection of the viewer Moon in Scorpio  Profound emotion Jupiter in Pisces  Encountering endless compassion Venus in Virgo  Artistic [...]

There is something very cool about Agatha Christie even as a child. Could it be Virgo Sun, Virgo Rsing and Saturn in Virgo Many years ago, I moved from  working in (weekly) magazine publishing to editing books. It was truly a move from Gemini-land to Virgo-land. The magazines were all about [...]

You may have read some of my previous posts on the “tutelary deities” used by Roman astrologers. These came as a surprise to me when I read about them last year since I’d not come across them in any astrology texts or lectures that I’d attended previously. Suffice to [...]

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 [...]

One face of the god Mercury. Freddie Mercury, the voice of Queen, would have been 65 today.  I’ve occasionally wondered how he chose the name Mercury and what the astrological connection would be – because of course there is one. So to celebrate his birthday I looked at his chart. [...]

Aww – weren’t they sweet. At exactly 11 o’clock on the 1 September, 1991, the Hogwarts Express left King’s Cross Station with Harry Potter on board for the first time. That was the day when Harry met Ron, and one of the most enduring friendships in literature began. [...]

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 [...]

I wrote a piece last year comparing Lady Gaga and Madonna. I was reminded of it because I’ve had a whole bunch of charts come across my desk with a Moon-Pluto conjunction. Now I hasten to add that all these charts belonged to people who were living out the combo well. The Gaga and the [...]

  JK Rowling – imagination, talent and wit. She’s the first person to make a billion by writing books. She’s ignited the imaginations of about a gazillion children on every continent. She’s managed to make a Virgo cool – well, sort of. For those of you who [...]

Peter Falk gained his wings this weekend. He was born September 16, 1927 in New York. What a superb actor. Sun in Virgo (craft/a working class hero), Moon (probably) in Gemini (that twinkle in the one good eye). His Uranus Return is right in the middle of the current cardinal afray; Uranus [...]

Venus Williams (17 June 1980) born with the Sun kissing Venus, sextiling the charismatic Moon-North Node conjunction in Leo (left. Neptune is in sporty Sagittarius directly opposite that Venus – again giving her star quality. With Pluto rising, she must have been her own worst enemy [...]

Ix Ah Wimbledon – pock, pock goes the little ball, ahh sighs the crowd, grunt grunts the player, “out” shouts the linesman. The rain, the strawberries, the tedious interviews (“yeah, I like played tennis, you know”) , the lovely game of tennis. In the midst of [...]

Ron (Pisces), Hermione (Virgo, obviously) and Harry (Leo) I’m afraid that my entire family is so gripped by Harry Potter frenzy that it’s quite hard to think of anything else. We started reading it together last winter and now we’re are just finishing the sixth book. If ever [...]

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 [...]