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 [...]

Hands off our national treasure My friend down the road never “bakes a cake”, she “does a Nigella”. I’m sure she’s not alone. Is there a kitchen bookshelf in Britain that does not have a thumbed edition of How To Eat or Feast or some other of Nigella [...]

The creatures of the Zodiac cavort in a loop through the sky that takes us from midwinter to midsummer and back again. We are used to thinking of them as starting with Aries the Ram and ending with Pisces, the Fishes. But there is another way of ordering the Zodiac that can help you to […]

U-Plu It’s all been a bit jagged for, well, years. For most people, the ongoing U-Plu (Uranus-Pluto square) has not gone smash-bang and changed everything. It’s felt more like a massive arduous grinding shift; a huge stone cog that judders along, sending out sparks every now and [...]

The Rhinemaidens The Elbe, the Vistula, the Inn, the mighty Danube himself, the busy Rhine – the rivers of central Europe are swollen, bursting their banks, rolling across the countryside, swallowing roads, cars, houses. Twenty people have lost their lives. The river gods are hungry. They are [...]

Low tide Cornwall, high noon. As the tide pulls away from the shore, a wondrous world of rock pools is revealed. Anemones, starfish, crabs. Slippery seaweed. Broken fishing nets, plastic bottles, a locked box, a glove. Detritus along the high tide mark. A dead crab. Thousands of glistening [...]

May 25th sees the final eclipse in the Gemini-Sagittarius group that’s spanned November 2o1o until now. You can see it’s at 4° Sagittarius. In the way of these eclipse groups, it has overlapped at one end with Cancer-Capricorn and now it’s overlapping at this end with [...]

Feminist poster from the sixties I’m still pondering the significance of the world’s biggest sex symbol removing her secondary sexual characteristics. Did it really come down to a choice between desirability or living? And if it did come down to that choice for Angelina Jolie, what [...]

Halvor kills the troll in Soria Moria Castle. “My name is Amanda Berry.” The first words she spoke after she crawled out of the house of her enslavement in Cleveland, Ohio were a statement of her identity. Amanda Berry is much more than what happened to her. Her decade-long [...]

Ribbons on a maypole Whenever I sit down and talk to someone about a chart, it strikes me afresh just how interesting and unexpected people’s stories are. Everyone’s life is not just one story but a whole necklace of tales threaded together by one soul. Those tales, of course, [...]

As you may know, May Day is a big deal here in Oxford. Here’s what I saw this unbelievably peachy morning. Happy May Day.

On the evening of November 18, 1987 an inferno blasted through King’s Cross underground station, killing 31 people, and injuring and maiming three times that number. The causes were negligence and a discarded match. Two weeks ago, the BBC reunited people who were directly involved in the [...]

Preity Zinta and Shahrukh Khan in Veer Zaara Love: comes in like a thunderbolt, and goes out like a monsoon. Especially if some heavy planets are involved. It can be pretty depressing when you’re just in the midst of the monsoon part and you regard Uranus and Neptune in your house of [...]

Winning her second term 1983. The whole country was frozen, dry and still in March and early April. In my garden, which at this time of year is usually bursting with buoyant blooms, nothing changed for weeks. This was all due to the strange, bitter weather, of course. Spring had been arrested. [...]

This week is going to be a firecracker, as the Sun, Mars, Venus cluster around unpredictable Uranus in Aries, the touchpaper sign.  The Moon is already involved with this, making a quincunx aspect to that pack of planets shortly, which creates a Yod with Saturn in Scorpio. This is all [...]

The Sun is in the last degree of Pisces today, just about to POP into Aries like a bubble bursting out of water. It will be at 0° Aries at 11.01AM  tomorrow, March 20th. That marks the start of the new year for the Zodiac. In particular, this is a moment to leave behind emotional (or […]

Blue, Green and Brown by Mark Rothko I do wonder how much astrology is used in the Vatican. The timing of Benedcit XVI’s resignation and then the papal conclave that starts today, on the day of the Pisces New Moon, is perfect. This Pisces energy is well-used in prayer, contemplation and [...]

Yachts Racing in the Upper Bay — James Edward Butterworth Like a ship in full sail, the planets are billowing across the sky on today’s New Moon in Pisces. You have to use your imagination a bit to see it, but then we are in the midst of powerful Piscean energy, so I am sure […]

Mami Wata 1999, by Moyo Ogundipe   It’s Mothering Sunday here. The Moon (Mama) is in the sign of the Fishes, coming up to conjunct the Sun in a day or so. Mama Wata, Yemanya, La Sirene — these are all names for the mother of the ocean worshipped in West Africa, Brazil, the [...]

Benedict XVI steps down tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI has the chart of a true “Prince of the Church“. He has the two planets of power, Saturn and Jupiter,  near the axes of his chart. This is something you see in royalty, people born to rule. In the case of the Pope, Jupiter is in the [...]