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 [...]

Jodie Foster is one of the few movie stars who has managed to transmute her juvenile brilliance into adult excellence. Now, she’s 50 and still at the top of her profession. It’s a remarkable career. But just as remarkable has been her determination to keep her private life out of [...]

Indians have taken to the streets to protest against violence against women. India, the world’s biggest democracy, is a great big bhel puri of languages, religions, customs and manners.  Special interests are as diverse as religious customs, but for the past month Indians have been [...]

October by James Tissot, who was born with Sun Libra, Saturn and Mercury in Scorpio. Saturn moving into Scorpio represents a major energy shift, and it’s time to apply some astrological knowledge instead of just theorising about it. Saturn likes rules, boundaries and organisation, so [...]

The 1998 World Cup winning French football team was an emblem of French diversity. The National Front said it wasn’t “French” enough. France is having a weird and unnerving time of it. Everything that seemed certain about the country is being shaken, questioned and has yet to [...]

Nude by Francis Cadell. “There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.” – Ralph Ellison, Born March 1, 1913 Sun in Pisces, Mercury in [...]

La Grande Bouffe Vesta was the most widely worshipped deity in the Roman empire since every house had a shrine to her – the hearth itself. That is why I associate the asteroid named after her with cooks. Back in January I wrote about Vesta in the charts of well-known cooks, pointing out [...]

“That old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” Othello strangles Desdemona  from Othello Othello rose to the highest public office; he fell because of a fatal flaw, a personality defect so big that it opened its mouth and swallowed him. Right now we are witnessing a tragedy. [...]

As you know, there are seven heavenly bodies in traditional astrology. The boys – Sun, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The girls – Moon, Venus. Five against two. Now does that seem fair to you? Does that even seem like life? Ceres, goddess of fertility, is sometimes assigned to [...]

Because at some point you have to come out of the closet, being an astrologer has something in common with being homosexual. “What do you mean “in the closet”?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s like this – most sensible people think astrology is a truckload of [...]

Gustave Doré’s Red Riding Hood. Usually, conversational gambits at the school gates go something like this: “How is Ermyntrude settling in?” “Isn’t the traffic awful?” “A bit nippy this morning eh?” Not the most thrilling set of references. So [...]