“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 […]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

In Arabic, Egyptian Arabic anyway, when you want to describe someone as really beautiful, you say she is like the Moon, or she has a face like the Moon. (How unlike “moonface” in English). When Venus is in the sign of the Moon, two of the most feminine energies in astrology are [...]

Hilarious, cosy, and wildly imaginative, Terry Pratchett cheered a lot of people up. He died yesterday, but his Discworld series will undoubtedly be read by generations to come. One of his greatest characters was Death himself, a rather comforting and kindly sort of person. “Don’t think [...]

Sadko In The Underwater Kingdom by Ilya Repin (Wikimedia Commons) From Tunisia to Elizabeth Taylor, you never know who you’re going to swim past down there in the blue, blue sea. With the Sun still in Pisces, visit or revisit these OA posts on or about the sign of the Fishes. A Fortnight [...]

Both Mars, the planet of action, an Venus, the planet of love, are currently in Pisces, the sign of Venus’ exaltation. When the lovers of the Zodiac meet — once a year or so — sparks fly. The lovers won’t meet up precisely until they both move into Aries later this [...]

For those of you curious to see the chart of Greece’s new finance minister, here it is. There is no birth time available, so I have drawn it for sunrise. Just briefly • Take a look at the nodes. SN conjunct Mercury in Pisces. (Wonder if there’s an ancestor in holy orders.). Brains [...]

I’ve often thought that Bill Clinton looks an awful lot like an older, whiter version of the actor Will Smith.     When the planet of beauty is in her own sign of Libra, you’d expect to find some real physical beauty. In particular, you might expect to find some perfectly [...]

When Robin Williams was on comic form, he made visions with words that tumbled out of his mouth and mind with an electrifying force and speed that was almost hallucinatory. His imagination was as wild and free-wheeling as a dolphin at play, or sometimes like a loose cable spraying sparks. [...]

Listen to a nocturne by Frederic Chopin late at night in a darkened room — just you and the music — and your spirit is taken somewhere beautiful, melancholy, mysterious — passionate. You are immersed in emotion, and emerge in the dawn light, soul-cleansed. There’s a lot [...]

Poet, dancer, dreamer, darer, storyteller, Maya Angelou, died yesterday. Her life was a hero’s journey from mocked child to lauded grand dame. Her own life story became a mirror for America to reflect on. And then there are her pithy observations on everything from creativity, [...]