Vivienne Westwood started her career running a shop called Sex at the grubby end of the King’s Road — first stop on London’s punk trail in the 1970s. Today, she is a doyenne of fashion world — doing the whole cat-walk-show thing and yet still a social revolutionary. With her North Node and [...]

It’s Charles Dickens birthday today. He lived the potential of his chart well. Writer and storyteller Virgo Rising, Gemini MC You see this combination quite often in writer’s charts. Both signs are ruled by Mercury, the planet of communications. Jupiter in Gemini, Jupiter in the 10th Jupiter [...]

February is a fast and urgent month with Mars, Venus and Uranus in fiery, furious Aries. Mars in his own sign is rather unbridled, Venus in her opposite sign is not doing her usual harmony, sweetness and light thing and Uranus is spitting sparks. Somewhere in your life there’s probably a bit [...]

If you subscribe to the horoscopes, it is that time of year again. I’ve put together a brief overview of 2017, including some hand-drawn squiggles which I hope you can make out. The book includes the Venus and Mercury Retrogrades, movements of the outer planets, the eclipses and Mars. Enjoy! [...]

Those of you following this Venus in… series will know already that Venus is not entirely about how you look. For that we look at the Ascendant and planets aspecting it. Venus though can tell us what makes you attractive, or even what makes you beautiful. So it’s pretty interesting that the [...]

My friend and colleague Sally Kirkman writes a detailed ebook guide to the year ahead annually. 2017 is available on this link. Sally has very kindly extracted three top tips for each sign to pin to your bulletin board this year. Aries Lust is out and love is in. Whether you learn this lesson [...]

The Queen, you may be aware, has had a cold. For the entire period of this Mercury Retrograde, her Majesty kept out of the public eye. She didn’t even make it to the Christmas church services — and that was for the first time in — well, forever. Yesterday, when Mercury went direct, she [...]

John Berger, art critic, author, poet, visionary, European became (almost) a household name when he made a four-part TV series called Ways of Seeing. This came out in 1972 and it’s a fascinating watch today — not just for the ideas, which became extremely influential (and still sometime [...]

Fragile, strong, sweet, sharp — a little broken. George Michael was a superstar with a seemingly boundless musical gift, but it was his vulnerability that made him special. Something, somewhere, had been cracked (one felt), and, like a “golden repair” on a Japanese pot, it made George Michael [...]

The shortest day of the year unfolded, unintentionally, as a meditation on our connection to God via a city break in Liverpool. In the morning, we went to the great hulking Anglican cathedral — which lours over the city from a high point overlooking the River Mersey and the Irish Sea. The [...]

The planet of luck, exaggeration and expansion, Jupiter, is in Libra until October 2017. Here are some ways to work with that rather flamboyant energy. Polish Your Politesse It’s time for manners to make a comeback. Make a conscious effort to say please and thank you, to respond graciously [...]

A poet, a mystic, a lover, a joker — a man. Leonard Cohen, who died last week at the age of 82, wrote complexly layered lyrics, with deceptively simple tunes. His songs coil and then unwind, as images and fragments of stories twist freely into your imagination. “There is no God in Heaven [...]

As some readers of this blog may have noticed, I couldn’t bring myself to take a close look at the close of polls chart for the US election. It was just too important — and I was scared of what I might find. However, a couple of weeks ago, when I was writing your horoscopes for […]

Chiron, the erratic asteroid that weaves between Uranus and Saturn, was discovered on November 1, 1977 on a photographic plate that had been taken on October 18. That second date might just ring a bell for you if you happen to be interested in contemporary art – because it’s also the [...]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: a game based on the idea that any player in Hollywood can be linked, through the films they have worked on, to character actor Kevin Bacon within six steps. So say, Kevin Bacon has a value of 0 — he being the centre of the Hollywood universe — then try linking […]

Today the Sun moves from mutable Virgo to cardinal Libra and the night is as long as the day. It’s one of the four corners of the year, when the season turns and we start our walk to the darkest day of the year. We are at one of the four Cardinal points (0° Libra), a beginning. And this year, [...]

What a shame that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are splitting up. It’s a tale of mutable tragedy. Pitt is a Sagittarian Sun and Jolie a Gemini — opposites attracted. Both these signs have been shaken and stirred this year by eclipses and a Jupiter transit in their fellow mutables Pisces and [...]

They say that the best way to see fairies is slantwise, out of the corner of your eye. Twisting, twirling, pirouetting india ink, delighted detail, subtle washes of colour and something sinister: the drawings of Arthur Rackham. Fairies swirl into trees, spin into trolls, spin into wild [...]

  Since music and astrology are in some senses soul-sisters, it’s surprising (perhaps) that so little music based on our cosmic art has been written in the classical tradition. So it’s hugely satisfying that award-winning composer, visiting professor at the Royal College of Music, [...]

I have, beside my bed, a most delicious and strange book. It’s so rich and peculiar that I have found I can only dip into it one story at a time. Yet it is so delightful that I keep it there to pick up every now and then so that I can take my mind far, far […]