You can feel the change in the northern hemisphere at this turn in the year — St Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin. From the Philippines to Poland, 1-2 February are celebrated with candlelight. It is Imbolc, one of the four corners of the year on [...]
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A Street Called Hope
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 [...]
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Solstice
The darkest night of the year is almost upon us. The nadir, the bottom, the grave, the tomb — and the womb. We are sliding gently into this zero hour, lighting our candles and fireworks to keep away the creeping shadows. Christmas is a beautiful celebration, and a deep understanding, of [...]
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The Popes and the Mother Goddess
Benedict XVI steps down tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI has the chart of a true “Prince of the Church“. He has the two planets of power, Saturn and Jupiter, near the axes of his chart. This is something you see in royalty, people born to rule. In the case of the Pope, Jupiter is in the [...]
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The Zodiac at the Heart of St Peter’s
Nuns in St Peter’s Square, Ash Wednesday 2013. On Ash Wednesday several thousand people queued around St Peter’s Square in the slanting afternoon sun. Above pulsed the blue dome of the a perfect Roman sky, ahead the pearly dome of the St Peter’s, mother church reaching out [...]
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The Breath of the Zodiac
I love this time between Christmas and New Year. I like to stay quiet in my lair and think and talk and stare at the fire. It’s a pause in the year’s activity like the white space at the end of a paragraph. It’s deeply, profoundly, awesomely yin – that is dark, [...]
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The Yin of Capricorn
Winter Moonlight by George Inness captures the stillness of this time of year. The end of December. In the northern hemisphere, the darkest, quietest and stillest part of the year. The time when the earth’s energy is at its weakest and we have a little more time to think – reflecting on the [...]
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Synchronicity, dreams and a case of exact astrological aspects
I’m going to tell a story that starts off badly and ends up well. Last night I dreamt that I was the only person left in the world and I could not find anything with which to kill myself. I woke up abruptly, terrified, with these words going through my head: “The world will not [...]
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