Poets Archives - The Oxford Astrologer

Category: Poets

Taurus: A Self-portrait and a Poem

The Afternoon Sun …This room, how familiar it is. The couch was here, near the door, a Turkish carpet in front of it. Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases. On the right—no, opposite—a wardrobe with a mirror. In the middle the table where he wrote, and the three big wicker chairs. Beside [...]

Aries: A Self-portrait and a Poem

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room… Read the rest of [...]

Astrology of Now: The Green One

The Green One, al Khidr, may be a traveller or an angel, a sailor or a sage; he guards the sea, is a patron of poets and calligraphers, heals the sick, and as you can see above rides on the back of fish. He may come to your aid if you are drowning, heal your […]

Amanda Gorman: On Fire

I was wondering how the Mars-Uranus conjunction — that fiery, combustible, dangerous pairing — would manifest on the day of the inauguration. And then Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureate, stepped onto the platform and began to declaim. She looked fantastic, like a queen from a [...]

Aquarius: A Self-portrait and a poem

Patterns I walk down the garden-paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jeweled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The garden-paths. My [...]

Sagittarius: A Self-Portrait and a Poem

I Am Much Too Alone In This World I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want […]

RIP Mary Oliver

"...I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should […]

Venus in Gemini: The Twinkle

Those of you who follow this series already know that we’re looking at beautiful or extraordinary people to try and get an idea of how Venus, the goddess of beauty, works in each sign. Light, breezy, youthful, friendly, clever, funny — those are Gemini adjectives. Maybe the most famous Venus [...]

The Lost Library of John Dee

John Dee — astrologer, alchemist and magus, one of the great characters of Tudor England — had the greatest private library in the western world. But when he was off on a European tour, it was pillaged by “friends” and the contents were lost. Some turned up in other collections over the [...]

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” Mercury and Sun in Aquarius It’s Toni Morrison‘s birthday today. She’ll be 85. The Nobel Prize-winning author (Mercury in Aquarius conjunct MC) and teacher (Saturn-Venus in the 9th) has Aquarius Sun, Pisces Moon, [...]

Mercury Retrograde: Live The Question

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to [...]

T S Eliot On Inspiration

When I read the following thoughts on creativity from the pen of the poet TS Eliot, I asked myself what’s happening in his 12th house? “I know, for instance, that some forms of ill-health, debility or anaemia, may (if other circumstances are favourable) produce an efflux of poetry [...]

On Walt Whitman’s Birthday

… and on the subject of great American poets, it’s Walt Whitman’s birthday today. What a marvellous expression of the joyful Gemini soul. This is from the beginning of Leaves of Grass. Come, said my soul, Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,) That should I [...]

This poem arrived in my inbox this morning courtesy of poets.org. Scandal Aren’t there bigger things to talk about Than a window in Greenwich Village And hyacinths sprouting Like little puce poems out of a sick soul? Some cosmic hearsay– As to whom–it can’t be Mars! [...]

Elders At night the moon shakes the bright dice of the water; And the elders, their flower light as broken snow upon the bush, Repeat the circle of the moon. Within the month Black fruit breaks from the white flower. The black-wheeled berries turn Weighing the boughs over the road. There is no [...]

Half in Love with Easeful Death

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 [...]

Death: A Most Authentic Experience

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 [...]

How the God of Liars Feeds the Soul

Pippi Longstockings, teller of tall tales, eternal child and a favourite of Mercury. This is a still from the Swedish TV series For the Romans Mercury was the protector of thieves and liars. He is that trickster god whom we find tiptoeing through the backdoor of so many cultures: he is Loki, [...]