Astro Blog

Times of Transitions

“It was not a movement. It was a feeling. A feeling that drove wave after wave of people in a great river that began to flow through London before noon and was still in full flood long after nightfall”. Sometimes journalists – here Richard Williams for The Guardian – capture the astrology of an event better than astrologers. And if anyone is in doubt, here is a perfect description of one of the better manifestations of the current Jupiter/Neptune oppositions from Leo to Aquarius. Jupiter/Neptune aspects often unite people who have a dream of a better world, and the opposition aspect typically unites people from many different parts of the human spectrum. Going back to the last opposition series 14 years ago from Cancer to Capricorn, at the time of the dissolution of Soviet power, over one million people from the Baltic lands joined hands over their borders to signify unity in the face of Soviet occupation. This opposition series reached its euphoric conclusion across the dividing line of the Berlin Wall, which in November 1989 was physically removed by the bare hands of German inhabitants, East and West, who joined in an outflow of emotion that electrified the whole world. Read More

Turkey in Europe

Crossing the Straits of Bosphorus in 1970, after hitching through Europe, was an extraordinary experience for me.

Istanbul itself – though very exotic with the Blue Mosque and the city’s Muslim culture – still had a European feel. But once across the waters that separated Istanbul from the rest, and far larger part, of Turkey, I knew I was definitely in unknown territory. Dry, poor, undeveloped, primitive, this was Asia, not Europe. At no point in the vast territory of Asian Turkey did I have to wait for more than 2 minutes for a lift – the people were friendly and hospitable beyond measure. They were definitely not European! 32 years later the European Union at the Copenhagen summit has given Turkey a date for full membership negotiations and thereby given the message that Turkey’s membership will contribute significantly to EU’s becoming a global power. Read More

George W. Bush & Saddam Hussein

If you look at the AstroCartoGraphy map for the USA (Sibley horoscope), you’ll find that the Pluto line goes straight through the Midheaven at Baghdad. In other words, the darkest projections of Americans are channeled into leadership issues in this distant country. As Pluto will often represent something that needs to be rejected, destroyed or eliminated, it is the natural fate of Saddam Hussein to be the object of the greatest fears of the USA, and to suffer accordingly. In this light it is easy to understand the Bush administration’s goal of removing him from power. Read More

Concorde: catastrophe as a metaphor

One of the best ways of learning astrology is through the study of events. There is rarely any doubt about the exact time of the event, and usually it is quite easy to see how an event reflects the astrology of the moment. However, it is also equally fascinating when the horoscope for a dramatic and powerful event does not seem powerful enough in relation to the event. It’s the same when you have a client with a powerful configuration, who cannot relate to the astrological interpretation of the configuration. At such times you know that there is a discovery to be made… you are about to learn something. I actually enjoy it when clients go blank. For example someone with a Moon square Saturn/Pluto who says, “Not at all, my relationship with my mother was just perfect”. (After a bit of probing you may then get…”Well yes, mother did lock me into the cellar for days at a time, but it was for my own good, you know.”) Read More

Electric Fish? Uranus in Pisces

Or could it be fishy groups? First TV show with robot as host? (Get the patent on that). Revival of electroshock as therapy? World government run by whales? (I’ll vote for that). First pictures of God? The ingress of Uranus into Pisces on March 10, 2003, is definitely going to work wonders for fantasy. I would like to think that it will spark a new liberalism based on compassion, but the wheels of history do not confirm this. Curiously, the last time Uranus came into Pisces on April 1, 1919, US abolitionists passed the liquor laws – the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution forbidding the manufacture, sale, import, or export of intoxicating liquors. It was not repealed until 1933, and in the meantime people really had fun drinking and breaking the law at the same time. It was good for the film industry and gangster movies too. You could say Uranus in Pisces in the twenties made alcohol famous and magical – in the USA people had to break the law to drink. Read More

Corruption in USA

Of the seven deadly sins, greed is an honored member, and none of us are completely free of it. It’s a natural human attribute, just like anger and jealousy, and connected with being human, and the need to survive. Recently however, it has been enshrined into corporate dynamics as the driving force because of the very structure of business today. It is short-term profit that drives most large companies, not necessarily because the leaders themselves want the profit, but because their shareholders do, and if profit is not delivered, then leaders are replaced. Share prices are the key to these profits, and therefore companies do what is in their power to get share prices up. This leads to some very creative accounting, because it’s crucial that the market gets a perception of a company in growth. With this perception, share prices go up, and everyone with shares earns money. The company really does seem to be healthy, and this boosts share prices even more. Suddenly it is in nobody’s interest that the balloon of confidence is punctured in any way, and this perpetuates a situation which in the long-term is untenable. Read More

Cycles large & small: Venus & Mercury

The solar system of which we are a part is full of extraordinary mysteries which people throughout history have tried to decipher. The relationship between size, distance and orbit has been the source of fascination for mathematicians and mystics and remains largely ignored or unexplained today. In the many centuries when a geocentric viewpoint prevailed, the retrograde movement of planets revealed a magic geometry which has been discarded of late, because – as we all know – the planets revolve around the sun, not around the Earth. Read More

The Art of Losing an Election

The art of electing a time to do anything is the most challenging task for any astrologer. Over the centuries rules have been written down, but times change, new planets are discovered, and no astrological configuration precisely repeats itself, making these rules limited in value. For many dedicated astrologers today – especially those interested in horary – planning actions according to chosen horoscopes becomes second nature. In this way it is possible to use daily life as a great teacher, and every day brings successes and failures which can be learned from. Read More

The Two Towers

When the first airliner flew into the first tower, things looked bad in Manhattan. Finally, it seemed, the many flights in the vicinity of New York had led to a terrible accident. When the second airliner flew in to the second tower, 15 minutes later – plenty of time for the TV cameras to be in position as was undoubtedly intended – then it dawned simultaneously for many millions that unnatural and evil forces were at play. Red flames, black smoke, spewed out from the stricken building, and the full horror of the situation was apparent. Some kind of war had been declared. That these buildings – these proud symbols of the Masters of the Universe in concrete, glass and steel – subsequently crumbled into dust, seemed an impossibility. Such an event could not happen. But it did. The founding stone had been laid with an exact Uranus/Pluto conjunction on August 5th 1966, and when the progressed Sun reached this point 35 years later – at the repeat of the Saturn/Pluto opposition – the building was engulfed in flames and turned to dust. Read More

Timothy Mcveigh and Collateral Damage

When the US ambassador to France arrived in Europe 4 years ago, he was an avid supporter of the death penalty. Today he is urging the US government to reconsider. He points out that capital punishment, along with universal access to guns, completely undermines America’s claim to world moral leadership and their policy of using human rights as a political tool. The European Convention on Human rights, signed by 39 countries, bans execution, comparing it to torture and genocide. This is in embarrassing contrast to an America which appears to embrace this form of punishment, led by a president who as state governor for Texas has presided over more executions than any other man in the US. Read More