I got excited a while ago when I noticed that Brazilian premier Dilma Rousseff, Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Korean PM Park Geun-hye all have Venus in Capricorn, the sign of earthly power. I wondered if there would be more women at the top of the political tree with [...]

Here we are at the dawn of the Year of the Fire Monkey and already the results of the New Hampshire Primary in the United States are telling us that this could well be the year of maverick. In Chinese astrology, the Monkey is just what you’d expect — clever, quick, a trickster, a [...]

If you’ve been following these “Venus In…” posts for a while, you will know that your Venus sign does not necessarily describe what you look like — that is more for the Ascendant  or ruling planet — but how you are attractive. Over the year, quite a few [...]

The city of Flint, Michigan has been poisoned by bad governance. That’s not a metaphor: it is literally true. Flint, located between two of the greatest freshwater lakes on the planet, is an old industrial town, ravaged like its big neighbour Detroit by post-industrial decline. Because [...]

David Bowie must have known he was dying when he recorded ★ (Blackstar), his final album, released on his to birthday three days ago. It’s a privilege to hear from this liminal place, the place between this world and the next, from such a great artist and poetic visionary. The title song [...]

In the early hours of 2016, more than a 100 women were sexually assaulted by roaming gangs of men in the streets of the German city of Cologne. At least one was raped. At least 1000 men are said to have been involved in the organised attacks. It took five days for the media to catch […]

Last night, the UK Parliament voted in favour of bombing ISIS in Syria (10.16pm, December 2, London.). And in so doing they showed what democracy is about. There were passionate, well-argued speeches on both sides  — but not by either leader. Both Cameron and Corbyn seemed lightweight [...]

Canadians, it seems, have thrown out old and cold Saturn in favour of Apollo himself, the god of light. In other words, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party trounced Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Harper was older, colder, stiffer and meaner. Trudeau’s approach to politics? [...]

The movement of the outer planets, Pluto, Neptune and Uranus, is generational. In particular, Pluto’s movement is slow enough — it takes about 15 years to get through a sign — to give us a wide cohort. Pluto tells us what is powerful, what is transformed, what is lost. [...]

If you didn’t believe in the power of astrological symbols before, you should now. The chart I use for the Republic of Turkey is set for the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923, absurdly recent for a country with such a long history, but as you can see from the transits to the [...]

As Venus strolls through each sign, she dons different clothes or new makeup; she sheds jewellery, cuts her hair, adds glitter, goes natural. The goddess shows that allure comes in many guises, not just physical beauty. The Rising sign, Sun sign and prominent planets are also important in [...]

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has this to say about more than 700 people being crushed to death at Mina during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj: “As for the things that humans cannot control, you are not blamed for them. Fate and destiny are inevitable.” Fate and destiny are by [...]

The warrior queen Zenobia passed under that Zodiac dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. By the start of her reign in the 3rd century BC, the Temple of Bel in Palmyra was already 200 years old. Its fabulous portico with the seven planets personified, surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac, would [...]

Jupiter in Virgo opposition Neptune in Pisces — September 17 Readers of the horoscope will know that the coming opposition between Jupiter and Neptune is the most important aspect this month, influencing this entire period into the next season and possibly the whole year.  For some [...]

Last week, I did a talk at Aquarius Severn which included a short picture essay. I’ll show it to you here. Remember that Neptune and Jupiter, the planets that promote flow, meet across the mutable Virgo-Pisces axis once a century. Jupiter in Virgo, Neptune in Pisces — 1849 Jupiter [...]

According to the on-line Oxford English Dictionary a migrant is “A worker who moves from place to place to do seasonal work.” A refugee is “A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster:” It’s a [...]

Of course it’s one thing to look at Jeremy Corbyn’s chart. He is clearly having a high old time, but we really ought to look at the chart of the Labour Party to get an idea of what’s going on. I asked my friend Liz, who is a fount of natal charts, what she had […]

The wave of left-wing emotion that’s swept through Europe from Greece to Spain and Italy has finally found a focus on these islands in the unlikely person of Jeremy Corbyn, a softly spoken Labour backbencher. It’s been a feeling in search of a leader. Corbyn is a slight, earnest, [...]

Just a quick note here, but sometimes you just couldn’t make the astrology up: it’s so simple. US President Barack Obama is visiting Kenya the birthplace of his father for the first time in his presidency. The astrology? Saturn, the planet associated with the father (along with the [...]

The Heraklean Way, one of the most ancient routes in Europe, runs from the Sacred Promontory on the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Matrona Pass in the Alps. It’s both a real road – you can still drive along parts of it today – and a mythical one, for it is said that the […]