Bonfire Night, November 5, was perfect this year — cold and crisp and clear. It gets dark now by about 5.30, and we walked over to the bonfire field through dark streets lit by sulfury orange streetlights. The field very dark, except on the far side where the bright yellow flames from the [...]

Today the Sun moves from mutable Virgo to cardinal Libra and the night is as long as the day. It’s one of the four corners of the year, when the season turns and we start our walk to the darkest day of the year. We are at one of the four Cardinal points (0° Libra), a beginning. And this year, [...]

When we talk about Venus, we talk about allure. When Venus, the planet of beauty and attraction, is in Taurus, she is in her own sign. Fixed Earth: the sign of full-busting spring in the north, when thoughts turn to what the birds and the bees do. Venus is, of course, the planet of love and [...]

Wipe away the steam and fog of Pisces, and look out through the crystalline window into the new year, freshly hatched in Aries. The equinox – which was officially yesterday – is a moment when day and night are held in balance. Then we tumble into Aries. We leap into impetuous spring. It’s a [...]

Velvety magic at the winter solstice. Light of the Sun swallowed, we spend a long night of darkness, but there is comfort in the night’s embrace. Even in these modern times, we can turn out the electric lights and gather round the fire, letting the dark cushion our backs. We are in a [...]

I’m writing this just as the Sun approaches the celestial equator. It is the equinox, when night and day are perfectly balanced. We enter the sign of Libra today, which this year is already hosting Mercury’s retrograde. Libra is one of the four cardinal signs that open the seasons [...]

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 [...]

The Heraklean Way, one of the most ancient routes in Europe, runs from the Sacred Promontory on the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Matrona Pass in the Alps. It’s both a real road – you can still drive along parts of it today – and a mythical one, for it is said that 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 [...]

“….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, […]

The Sun is a pilgrim on a year-long journey that begins where it ends and ends where it begins. It’s a cycle, of course, and a spiral too. And within that solar cycle — above and below it perhaps — are the cycles, longer and shorter, of the planets. Especially there is the [...]

May Magnificat May is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why: Her feasts follow reason, Dated due to season— Candlemas, Lady Day; But the Lady Month, May, Why fasten that upon her, With a feasting in her honour? Is it only its being brighter Than the most are must delight her? [...]

At least 50 people have died in the catastrophic flooding that began last week in the Balkans, including entire families swept away by the rising water. Around a million people have been displaced and millions more are without clean water. Last May it was Central Europe that was under [...]

Port Meadow, Oxford, yesterday, February 16 I started to write this post in the middle of the Full Moon storm, so it’s slightly out of synch with the weather now – three days later. But I have left the words as they are because I think it works with the current slightly confused [...]

Port Meadow, Oxford this morning. The water level is still rising. First rain and snow, then floods. The old gods. Thousands of years ago, we’d have thrown iron into the water to propitiate them, or maybe sacrificed a white bull. Today we gaze at screens. There’s awe but surely [...]

Winter Afternoon — Yuli Yulievich Klever — It’s just after four in the afternoon and night already. Daylight went in a blinking here in the deep of the year. Tomorrow the Sun moves into Capricorn, Saturn’s sign; the sign of responsibility, of the father, of old age [...]

The Death of Arthur by John Carrick (1852). Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur (the main source for all King Arthur legends) was published a few weeks after Richard III’s death “And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd, old ends stol’n out of holy writ, And seem a saint, [...]

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 […]

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 [...]

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.