Imagine you are walking up a mountain trail. You’re slowing down because the way is getting steeper, and rougher — and your sense of dread and unease grows with every step. A dark shadow looms on the path in front of you, filling you with dread. You turn tail and fly, tripping down the [...]

Donald Trump has been on TV since 2004, sitting at a big desk with the stars and stripes behind him. He wasn’t the president then, just pretending to be a boss on the reality TV show The Apprentice. He looked menacing and said, “You’re fired”, and rewarded contestants if they were “good”, and [...]

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 [...]

My friend Anton D’Abreu from Cycles of History has very kindly sent this chart analysis of transits to the chart of the United States on the day after the election. The Sibly chart (Koch) is used. Only the USA chart is analysed. All dates 2016 unless specified otherwise. Transiting houses are [...]

Hot-metal printing was finally killed off in the mid-1980s. Its demise had been a long time coming, as it was superseded by other cleaner, faster, cheaper technologies. London’s print unions were some of the last in the world to hold out, in the Wapping Dispute with Rupert Murdoch’s News [...]

Mars and Pluto are having their biannual conjunction — today, tomorrow, and the day after. Yes, that’s two warriors having a confab in ambitious, driven, earthy Capricorn; the planet of action, Mars, and the planet of the Underworld, Pluto, working together; war plus power. On the mundane [...]

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 [...]

This American election is an archetypal battle, the stuff of fairytale or legend. The two sides line up, accusing each other of hatred, lying and lasciviousness; of baseness, vileness, bestiality. In their vagueness sometimes, the smears require a leap of imagination from the public. What’s [...]

“I wanted to come out with a cane, come down slowly, have it stick into one of the bricks, get up, fall over, roll around, and they all laugh and applaud. The director asked, ‘what do you want to do that for?’ I said from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying […]

My colleague Rollan McCleary sent me this email last week, which I thought I’d share with you. This is especially for those of you interested in asteroids. “I will paste below a small piece I put out on the American Noel Tyl site and called Picture of a Modern Martyrdom.  You  may find you [...]

“Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too [...]

Diamond Reynolds live-streamed the immediate aftermath of her boyfriend’s murder by a police officer in St Paul, Minnesota on Wednesday. Her powerful testimony during the filming, and at an impromptu press conference the following day is so compelling, so passionate, so pure. If words can [...]

Last night, I sat in one of the most magnificent private courtyards in Europe, listening to 200 musicians play the works of Ennio Morricone. The Italian composer, now 87 years old, conducted a huge choir and orchestra himself. The heavy rains were finished. The clouds parted, the sun set lemon [...]

On June 23, the people of United Kingdom will go to the polls to make the most important collective decision of a lifetime. Should we stay in the European Union or should we go? The decision taken now could change the country’s future absolutely — probably not in the ways predicted by any [...]

Self-named, self-invented, self-motivated, champion boxer Muhammad Ali was a modern embodiment of the archetype of hero. He was charismatic, strong, graceful, poetic in speech, courageous in deed. He spoke up for the millions and laughed at the powerful. He took his punishment squarely and [...]

I wrote to my friend Anton D’Abreu recently pointing out that the chart for the European Union was under a great deal of pressure during this Mars transit. Later this summer, Mars will station direct at 23° Scorpio nearly conjunct the EU Mars-Pluto conjunction. The Mars-Pluto conjunction [...]

Just gutted. She was only 62. A comic genius.  

“I want these crimes to be made public”, leaker “John Doe” to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It turns out that very rich people have been hiding their money in secret bank accounts abroad. Why do they feel the need to do this? Either a) because the money is stolen or b) because they are avoiding [...]

The world’s foremost female architect died at the height of her powers yesterday. Zaha Hadid was taken suddenly — by a heart attack — when Uranus (shock) and Mercury (nerves) met opposite her insanely visionary Neptune. Hadid was an architect who opened the door to the future for us, and [...]

Imagine a time when the Thames was the busiest highway in London, and the king’s barge a most glorious water-borne rolls-royce of golden curlicues. What could be a lovelier accompaniment to a balmy summer evening bobbing along the river than music wafting across the water. King George I [...]