Category: Middle East

Astrology of Now: Out of Hell
As the prisoners pour out of the cells in Sadnaya prison, you can hear their liberators saying over and over, “Thank god for your safety,” the traditiional greeting for someone who has returned from a long journey or illness.  “Hamdillah es-salaameh.” And many of these [...]
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Peace Now
The unleashing of terrible rage along the barbed borders of the Gaza Strip fills us with dread, resounding like a doomsday knell from the heart of the world. Astrologically, it’s easy to see how this and that add up to horror. The planet of rage and aggression Mars, transiting [...]
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Lilith 2020
In a few days time, January 27, Lilith, that strange mathematical point in the sky — an empty space, an idea, a void? — shifts into the realm of Aries, where she might burst into flame.   Her first contact will be Chiron, the centaur who weaves the outer and inner planets together, [...]
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One Night In Cologne
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 […]
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Astrology of Now: Overwhelming
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 [...]
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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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Virgins, Black Power, African Liberation…
The month of Virgo was beautiful here, one warm soft day follows another. But the weather was also strange and unseasonable. The nights draw in but the days are as warm as summer. It’s dreamlike. Being deep in the dream of Virgo this year — with the help of an opposition from [...]
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Eyeless in Gaza
“…Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves … from Samson Agonistes by John Milton John Milton’s play Samson Agonistes, based on part of Judges in the Old Testament, begins with the hero, “the great deliverer” [...]
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Astrology of Now: Battle for the Throne of Ishtar
“…Syrians and Iraqis are both trapped between dictators on the one hand and extremists on the other. An unhappy choice.” from today’s Economist on-line. Yes, that sounds like the situation for a lot of people — more or less — caught in the crossfire of the [...]
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Ariel Sharon: Simultaneously Complex And Simple
Ariel Sharon aged 19 wikimedia commons Ariel Sharon lived a life of mythological proportions. Villain, hero, warrior; farmer, politican, bully; killer, peacemaker; and in every role “the bulldozer”. And those were just his public faces. So how come the unstoppable bulldozer [...]
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Egypt Stuck On The Axis Of Change
The petition that started this wave of revolution was sponsored by a group calling itself Rebel. Uranus, the rebel planet, is currently trining Egypt’s Moon which represents the people. Egypt, or the Egyptian people, have caught, amplified  and expressed the planetary energy of now. What [...]
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Qatar: It’s A Family Business
Old Emir/new Emir The little kingdom of Qatar, which sticks out like a thumb into the Arabian Gulf, is a fiefdom belonging to the Al Thani family. Happily for them, it’s a thumb that’s stuck in a magic pudding, which just goes on and on giving – at current estimates more than $200 [...]
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Astrology of Syria
Here is what I wrote about Syria last spring. “Let us pray for as many ceasefires as possible, because this is a long, drawn-out struggle. I really hate to be pessimistic, but it seems to me there is a strong potential for civil war, whether Assad himself stays or goes. If the [...]
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Gaza: The Quality of Mercy
After I gave birth to my first daughter in a London hospital, I shared a room with three other women – a Palestinian, an Israeli, and a London Iranian. No kidding. There was some awkward negotiating around drips, cots, nurses and nappies. But the presence of tiny new babies creates a certain [...]
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Just To Remind You
At last Egypt has a democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not a surprise if you paid attention to the astrology. Here’s what I wrote about Egypt back in November 2011: “I suspect the importance of the Muslim Brotherhood will [...]
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Egypt: Eating Shit or Revolution?
There’s been a creative explosion of graffiti in Cairo post-January 25 “Given a choice between eating shit or eating shit, most Egyptians have decided they’re not hungry,” Omar Kamel, Egyptian activist. He was talking about the phony elections held in Egypt over the [...]
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Syria: The Blood-Dimmed Tide
A member of the Free Syrian Army, an avatar of Pluto wearing his helmet of invisibility. This was written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats in the 1919 in the aftermath of World War 1 and the Easter Rising in Ireland. As well as being a poet, Yeats was a visionary and a mystic. […]
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Massacres in Syria
Bosnia: concentration camps in the 1990s What’s happening in Syria is very, very nasty. It’s reminding me too much of Bosnia in the early nineties, when the UN decided not to intervene and the result was horror. In June, I wrote a piece about Syria which is accurate. Please click [...]
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Egypt: More Work To Do
Praying in Tahrir Square Back in February, I concluded my piece on Egypt with this remark: “Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if the junta makes way for a genuine democracy. Getting rid of Mubarak may turn out to have been the easy part.” To read the rest of that post, Killing [...]
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Ceres, Food and Revolutions
Shopping for bread in the middle of a riot can be hectic. Tunisia. Have you looked closely at your grocery bill recently? It’s gone through the roof in the last 12 months right. I’m sure inflation for food is way ahead of the official figure. So I was intrigued to read this piece [...]
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