The island of Santorini “In tempi come questi, la fuga è l’unico mezzo che rimane per mantenersi vìvi e continuare a sognare. In times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and continue dreaming.” The Italian film Mediterraneo (1991), begins with this quotation from the [...]

This morning tanks rolled into a small village in northern Syria and started shooting at villagers randomly. How can a government turn its guns on its own people?  Modern Syria is an invention of 20th century mapmakers and politicians. The political boundaries of  the country may be firmly [...]

The Queen’s trip to Ireland this week shifted Anglo-Irish relations a lot closer to normal. The relationship between Britain and Ireland has often been like a bad marriage: with Britain in the role of abusive husband. He loves her and he hits her. He can’t understand it when she [...]

Bollywood produces beauties by the bucketload. If you’re a leading lady in Indian popular cinema, there’s a look you ought to have – long smooth hair, pale skin, almond eyes. It goes without saying really, that your sexual charisma needs to be pretty volcanic. Since all the other [...]

“That old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” Othello strangles Desdemona  from Othello Othello rose to the highest public office; he fell because of a fatal flaw, a personality defect so big that it opened its mouth and swallowed him. Right now we are witnessing a tragedy. [...]

Medusa, the snake-haired gorgon, turned men to stone just by looking at them. Some say she was enraged by her violation by the sea god. The only person to escape her fatal gaze was the hero Perseus, who used her reflection in his shield to aim the blow that cut off her head, which he […]

Here are previous posts I’ve written on the Royal Wedding, which you might like to peruse before the day itself.Celebrating PowerA general look at the day itself.Juno Lends a Helping HandThe marriage asteroid is deeply involved.The Bling of PowerThat ring.Kate Middleton’s Birth [...]

Last summer, I predicted a royal wedding this year. That was partly on the basis of how alarmingly these times in Great Britain resemble that watershed year 1981 – brutal financial restrictions from the government, blood on the streets, looming unemployment and an uneasy Liberal coalition [...]

One of Hiroshige’s Views of Mount Fuji As a wedding gift, the dragon-king of the sea gave his human son-in-law two jewels – kanju and manju. He wanted to ensure the future prosperity of his semi-divine descendants. Those jewels were not just decorative though. They had wonderful [...]

Godzilla emerged from the depths of the ocean back in 1954, and trashed Tokyo. He may have been a plastic monster in a less than B-movie, but he also symbolised something important. Let me explain. A rather attractive Polish version of Godzilla. Godzilla – as you may recall (I had to [...]

I’ve just been asked to put up a chart for the earthquake, so here it is. As I pointed out before, Uranus is in the last minutes of Pisces, so the planet of surprises leaves the sign of the deepest oceans on a tidal wave. The imagery could not be clearer. I haven’t decided which [...]

Uranus leaves Pisces today or tomorrow (depending on where on earth you are) after eight eventful years. Get your life-jackets out, it’s going to be stormy.

I wrote a post at the start of this month about the Year of Revolutions, 1848, and its paralells with now. To read it and reflect on the events in Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia click here.

Egyyptian women demonstrating in the 1919 uprising against the British. Photo: Wikimedia Commons As you already know if you are a regular reader of this blog, Egypt is having its second Saturn Return. And it’s all been rather exciting to say the least. I thought I’d just remind you [...]

Set during the Paris uprising of 1848, Flaubert’s novel Sentimental Education explores lessons in love and friendship. It was published some 20 years after the events. I’ve been thinking about the planet Neptune’s ingress into Pisces a lot over the past year.  This will [...]

Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, assassinated in 1981. Astrology tells us that the assassination of President Anwar Sadat back in 1981 links to the current riots in Cairo. How so?Read on and find out.But let me begin at the beginning.I’ve just had some correspondence about national [...]

This is the chart I used for my analysis of the Tunisian Uprising in the previous post. It’s dated for the founding of the Tunisian Republic and it includes progressions and current transits from the outer planets.  Click on it to see it larger.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!--" William Wordsworth wrote these words about the French Revolution more than 200 years ago. But he was a spectator, a friend of France, not a participant, and he never suffered through what became known as the Terror. [...]

Poster  for the 2004 Korean blockbuster, The Brotherhood of War. So South Korea is a successful, entrepreneurial (if rather corrupt) Leo Sun and North Korea is an angst-ridden, self-hating Virgo. Sibling rivalry is rarely this toxic. The two countries were born just a few weeks apart on the 15 [...]

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. George Osborne is going to be one of the most hated public figures of our time. But he can take it This afternoon George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave the most important speech of his life – and maybe ours. Is this a full [...]