Twelve people at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down on January 7. In the same week, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received the first 50 lashes of his 1000-lash sentence for blasphemy, ironically, an echo of the Charlie Hebdo cover that caused such offense in [...]

The image of Hygeia is a constant in modern times. Although we do not always recognise her for the goddess that she is, perhaps there are more images of her in the media than any other Greek goddess except Aphrodite. In the Greek pantheon, she is one of the daughters of Aesculapius, the [...]

The darkest night of the year is almost upon us. The nadir, the bottom, the grave, the tomb — and the womb. We are sliding gently into this zero hour, lighting our candles and fireworks to keep away the creeping shadows. Christmas is a beautiful celebration, and a deep understanding, of [...]

You are familiar with the story of Sleeping Beauty, so familiar that the horror of it has ceased to horrify. This is the story of a baby, born perfect, sentenced to death. She is cursed in the cradle by a vengeful fairy to die at 16. Only by the actions of a good fairy is her […]

Not only was the news this morning sad, it was troubling, horrifying, grotesque, macabre — satanic even. I’m referring to the murder of the American hostage Abdul-Rahman Kassig and 18 unnamed Syrian troops by Islamic State. All were gruesomely killed for the camera, and the video [...]

“….I am the incomprehensible silence and the much-remembered thought. I am the voice of many sounds and the utterance of many forms. I am the utterance of my name. Why, you who hate me, do you love me And hate those who love me? You who deny me, confess me, And you who confess me, […]

Someone asked last week when the white-masked people were coming to fight the black-masked Islamic State killers. Maybe the answer is, they are already here; but they’re busy. Healthworkers tackling the Ebola outbreak are sheathed in plastic. The white hoods and masks they wear do make [...]

George Clooney, handsome, talented and famous, seems to unite some of the best blessings of existence. Amal Alamuddin, beautiful, successful, cosmopolitan and not just a top lawyer, but a human rights one! Cream at the top of the collective coffee cup. Both just so good on paper. Which one is [...]

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 [...]

I’m afraid I got the data wrong. I misread my own handwriting. Apologies to Geoffrey Cornelius. I had to adjust it anyway, because my software was acting up, so I’ve redone it on astro.com. Here is the corrected chart. Thanks to Elizabeth Hathaway for pointing this out. I have also [...]

At the Astrological Association annual chinwag a few weekends ago, the astrologer Geoffrey Cornelius, author of The Moment of Astrology, showed a chart for Islamic State, the group claiming hegemony across northern Syria and Iraq. His reasoning for this chart was convincing, (the founding of [...]

Walk into Libra’s garden, the seventh house of the chart, and you will find yourself in a bower of sweet scented roses, treading on forget-me-nots, violas, love-in-the-mist. You might stroll down a lover’s walk through dripping wisteria to a summerhouse by a romantic lake. The [...]

  The charmed quincunx between Jupiter and Neptune continues this week but now it’s graced by the presence of Venus, the goddess of love herself. Please read this piece for more on the quincunx. Jupiter is at 6/7° Leo. Venus joins him there today and for the rest of this week. [...]

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. [...]

I am sitting at a desk in a high-ceilinged room in Brighton. The tall window frames blue, at the lower edge lavender blossom and then a few inches above, the horizontal of prussian blue sea meeting pale, brilliant summer sky. In the distance, the sounds of church bells, surf, cars’ [...]

To one with faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. Thomas Aquinas St Thomas Aquinas was not talking about belonging to a particular religion, since in his day — 13th century Italy — he could assume that his readers were inside the same [...]

The New Moon tomorrow at the very start of Jupiter’s journey through the sign of the Lion is enormously potent. You may see yet more action geopolitically, because on the very same day Mars finally moves out of Libra and into his own sign of Scorpio. This could be quite dangerous, even [...]

If you remember the end of A Hard Day’s Night, you’ll have some idea of what to expect from this Full Moon. The film follows The Beatles for the 36 hours leading up to a live performance in 1964. The final sequence of the film is the concert. The camera cuts back and forth between [...]

A massive, long-buried scandal is erupting in Britain. For decades, a network of paedophiles that included members of parliament, ministers and top civil servants operated in London, and across the UK — allegedly. Children, mainly boys, were taken from children’s homes and passed [...]

Already, you are mine. Rest with your dream inside my dream. Love, grief, labour, must sleep now. Night revolves on invisible wheels and joined to me you are pure as sleeping amber. No one else will sleep with my dream, love. You will go, we will go joined by the waters of time. No other […]