The Glastonbury Festival, the pop music extravaganza held in bucolic south-west England every June is now part of the established summer season, along with the Proms, Glyndebourne and Henley Regatta. It started off as Pilton Festival on Michael Eavis’ farm just outside Glastonbury, [...]
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I like to write about people and the astrology that shapes them – and here’s a gallery of some of my heroes, heroines and villains.
Brad Pitt’s Saturn Return Goes Neptunian
The second Saturn Return at around the age of 58 or 59 is a time when a chapter closes and a new door opens into what may be the final third of a person’s life. It’s as important as the one at 28, when real adult life begins and the first flush of youth is […]
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Mister Rogers: The Opposite of Cynical
In Mister Rogers’ neighbourhood people are honest, your feelings are important, and you are special. Mister Rogers exuded goodness of heart, purity of intention and folksy wisdom. He was the opposite of cynical. I was tiny when I watched his show but I still remember how Mister Rogers [...]
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Issey Miyake: Engineering Beauty
“All I want is for people to experience a sense of joy when they wear my clothes.” If you have ever owned a garment made from one swathe of cloth, folded and cut into a shape that drapes and clings, flares and flutters, or creates an alien silhouette; that felt like a second, [...]
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Andrew Cuomo’s Big Role
New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings about the Coronavirus have become comfort-viewing for millions over the past few weeks. As he sits behind the great big wooden desk in New York’s state capital Albany every day and calmly explains the numbers, the plan and the [...]
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Harry Styles: Beloved by Venus
She lives in daydreams with me She’s the first one that I see And I don’t know why I don’t know who she is … ” — She Talented, graceful Aquarian Harry Styles is much more than a pop star, indeed he appears to be channelling something bigger than himself [...]
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The Absolutely Fabulous Laura Dern
Laura Dern just won the Oscar for best supporting actress. A well-deserved tribute to an actress whose electric screen presence is always mesmerising — even when she’s just ordering a kale salad in Marriage Story. Dern’s chart is just so Hollywood, with a massive stellium in [...]
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Baroness Hale’s Spider Brooch
Baroness Brenda Hale, head of the Supreme Court, delivered the devastating verdict on the government’s attempt at prorogation, yesterday. Her language was exceptionally clear and easy for even the most unlearned friend to understand. Also she looks like a sweet grandma out of a story [...]
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Ghislaine Maxwell’s Saturn Returns
When you venture into the dark woods of fairy tale, be careful of the creatures you meet — they might not be what they seem. The wolf may speak like a gentleman, the witch may live in a house of gingerbread. Hansel and Gretel’s witch lured them with sugarplums and cake; then she [...]
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Toni Morrison and Black Moon Lilith
I’ve been thinking about the American writer Toni Morrison today, the day after she died, and remembering her book Beloved, which won her the Pulitzer Prize, and is considered by most critics to be her masterpiece. Beloved tells the story — in densely poetic language and imagery [...]
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Greta Thunberg, One of the Wise Children
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. [...]
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Karl, the Cat and Jacques de Bascher
The fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld — wizard, shape-shifter, and, as he put it himself, vampire — died in February, leaving a fortune to his gorgeous pet, Choupette, the most famous cat on Instagram. Lagerfeld showed all the signs of being a kind of ultra-Uranian from the top of his [...]
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Oh The Magnficence: Scott Walker
I sometimes feel I need to shake myself like a wet dog after listening to Scott Walker, and, maybe, watch the droplets turn into glorious rainbows, transform into hummingbirds. Two lines into a Scott Walker song and you are immersed, taken into another, magical dimension. His perfect diction, [...]
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The Unstoppable AOC: A Mighty Saturn Return
It’s easy to forget in all the fuss about the youngest ever congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that her main asset is her mind (Mercury on the MC). Her evisceration of the campaign finance laws this week demonstrated her razor sharp intelligence and ability to get to the heart of an [...]
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RIP Nancy Wilson
Intelligent, emotional and true — Nancy Wilson called herself a “song stylist”. She managed to mix irony and compassion in her interpretations seemingly effortlessly. She died today at the ripe age of 81. Listen to her caught-you-red-handed song, Guess Who I Saw Today, for an [...]
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Just A Little Broken: RIP George Michael
Fragile, strong, sweet, sharp — a little broken. George Michael was a superstar with a seemingly boundless musical gift, but it was his vulnerability that made him special. Something, somewhere, had been cracked (one felt), and, like a “golden repair” on a Japanese pot, it made George Michael [...]
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Muhammad Ali: Leo Rising
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 [...]
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Women on Top: Venus in Power
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 [...]
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On Pisces
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 [...]
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Conscious Uncoupling: Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin
The rest of the world divorces, separates, splits up, breaks up, calls the lawyers, tears each others eyes out; film-star Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin “consciously uncouple“. We may all roll our eyes at the (conscious or not) superiority of their announcement, [...]
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