Author: Christina

August Horoscopes

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I am writing this as a warm, dry wind rustles the fig tree outside the window. It’s a strange wind, unusual for this time of year in France, bearing no rain, but a promise of thunder. That feeling of an electrical storm — with all its beauty and terror — may be what you feel now about the month ahead. And indeed it is quite a month, with two eclipses and a Mercury Retrograde to contend with. The mighty Sun is at his most powerful in August, since the Lion, the sign he rules, rides on the horizon. And this August the Sun is accompanied […]

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The Summer Wind

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A little easy listening for summer. This melancholy song with its beautiful lyrics has been covered many times. I didn’t know it was initially a German tune — Der Sommerwind — which Johnny Mercer heard and translated into English. I’ve been listening to many versions on YouTube. Here are my four top picks, plus the astrological information I can find about each singer. ———————————- This is the great lyricist, musician and founder of Capitol Records Johnny Mercer himself, singing his own words. It’s confident, wistful, grown up, sophisticated, precise. Also, unlike a lot of versions, it’s perfectly paced.   Scorpio Sun, Aquarius Moon, Leo […]

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Ayn Rand: The Dark Side of the Goddess of Wisdom

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In Hans Christian Andersen’s story  The Snow Queen, a little boy called Kay has tiny shards of an evil, distorting mirror lodged in his heart and in his eye. “…a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked ugly was shown magnified and increased in ugliness. In this mirror the most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best persons were turned into frights, or appeared to stand on their heads; their faces were so distorted that they were […]

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Crab, Crayfish — or Scarab?

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If you look at old manuscripts, or the doors of cathedrals, or stained glass or indeed most representations of the sign Cancer before the Renaissance, you won’t always be looking at a roundish, cosy old crab. Sometimes Cancer is a crayfish, sometimes an odd beetley thing, sometimes who knows?! In ancient Egypt, the constellation was named scarab, after the dung beetle, a creature of extraordinary importance in the Egyptian world. The dung beetle was associated with Khepri, the god of the rising sun, a creator god and bringer of life. Scarabs made of faience or carved from stone were popular amulets. Small ones must […]

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July Horoscopes

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It’s quite a month ahead. The god of war and fire, Mars, has been clanking through Cancer, the sign of home and mother, patriotism and tribe, since June 5, making his way towards an inevitable confrontation with Pluto on July 2. These two gods of war clash every couple of years in fact, so it’s not such an unusual face-off. Yet it’s clear this year, that this is an especially potent opposition.  It’s tense and emotional. That opposition is further stimulated by the Full Moon on July 9. A week later, Mars takes a final hostile sideswipe at Uranus before […]

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The Tower

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The fourth wall of that apartment was sky — straight out west to infinity. At sunset, the colours were delirious: orange, magenta, fuchsia, red, burning in the west. And then, through dusk, subtle mauve and bruises. In the distance the planes circling to land at Heathrow blinked in the beautiful damask clouds. When night fell, the sky was prussian blue. It was a magical view, full of possibilities and dreams. To the right were the towers, some close to, and others smaller, a mile or so away. During the day, these were boring blocks of brown, but when the deep blue came, they turned into glittering constellations. […]

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Solstice Blessings

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It’s true the world around us is in upheaval. We are in a time of transition, with all the dangers, obstacles and dramas which that entails. And astrologically on this Solstice we can expect the collective emotional temperature to be turned up to boiling point — (with Mars and the Sun in Cancer soon to oppose Pluto in Capricorn square Jupiter in Libra and finally Uranus in Aries.) This summer is already too hot. However, within this maelstrom, there are some outstanding positives on which to focus here at the turning point of summer. The shape of the planets on this day […]

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The Price of a Cup of Coffee

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As those of you who are already subscribers will know, the monthly horoscopes here on The OA are in some ways the heart of the site — and I’d like to thank all of you who have remained such loyal readers over the last few years. You have helped support the whole website. The horoscopes are a co-creation between me, the writer, and you, the reader. Each is about 1000 words long per sign, depending on the month ahead — and you blend the Rising sign and Sun sign as you read, interpreting the interpretations. The breadth of the material allows you to […]

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