Author: Christina

The Autumn Equinox

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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, Jupiter, for the first time in 12 years, magnifies Libra, and the things of Libra… What is more Mercury, the planet of speed and communication, turns direct today… That is something to bear in mind in the coming weeks. Happy Equinox! *This rather mysterious painting, titled […]

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Brangelina Back To Just Plain Old Brad and Angelina

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What a shame that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are splitting up. It’s a tale of mutable tragedy. Pitt is a Sagittarian Sun and Jolie a Gemini — opposites attracted. Both these signs have been shaken and stirred this year by eclipses and a Jupiter transit in their fellow mutables Pisces and Virgo — not to mention gloomy Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius and harsh square to romantic Neptune in Pisces. The latter was a big reality check for everyone. That eclipse on September 1 smacked poor Brad Pitt right where it hurts most — on his Chiron. In fact, his […]

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Artist’s Birthday: Arthur Rackham

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They say that the best way to see fairies is slantwise, out of the corner of your eye. Twisting, twirling, pirouetting india ink, delighted detail, subtle washes of colour and something sinister: the drawings of Arthur Rackham. Fairies swirl into trees, spin into trolls, spin into wild flowers. It’s English illustrator Arthur Rackham’s 149th birthday today — or his third Chiron Return. And understanding Chiron in Pisces might be critical to understanding his work. Rackham drew the stunted, hunched, lame creatures of magic — the trolls and dwarves, giants and witches, wind-blasted hawthorns and twisted oaks — with a kind of beady zest that seemed […]

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A Musical Zodiac: Interview with the Composer

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  Since music and astrology are in some senses soul-sisters, it’s surprising (perhaps) that so little music based on our cosmic art has been written in the classical tradition. So it’s hugely satisfying that award-winning composer, visiting professor at the Royal College of Music, conductor and all round music maven Debbie Wiseman has filled this lacuna with a luscious, imaginative Musical Zodiac. This is a sequence of sound portraits in the classical tradition — like Elgar’s Enigma Variations — with one song for each sign from Aries to Pisces. Wiseman talked to The Oxford Astrologer last week and gave a little insight into the evolution of the work. […]

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Astrology of Now: Eclipse — It’s All Maya

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Tomorrow, September 16, there will be a partial eclipse of Lady Luna. You will be able to see this from Europe to the Western Pacific. The point of closest eclipse is at 18.54 GMT. Right now the Moon is already in Pisces. The eclipse takes place at 24°.   Last night, I stood in the garden looking at the Moon hanging like a glass bauble in the night sky. It was a very clear night — and unusually warm for this time of year. I could see all the mysterious markings across the white surface of the Moon. How she glistened. She appeared so […]

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The Astrology of Ceres

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The dwarf planet Ceres, named after the goddess of fertility and agriculture, takes four years to make her way through the Zodiac, spending about four months in each sign. But this year, due to retrograde, she will be spending an unusually long time in Aries and the early degrees of Taurus. Ceres turned retrograde on August 31 at 5° Taurus and she retreats into Aries on October 13. Ceres is about the same size as Pluto. Although her influence has been widely ignored by the astrological establishment — even though the asteroids were discovered over 100 years earlier than Pluto […]

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The Book of Heaven

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I have, beside my bed, a most delicious and strange book. It’s so rich and peculiar that I have found I can only dip into it one story at a time. Yet it is so delightful that I keep it there to pick up every now and then so that I can take my mind far, far away — to another universe in fact. If you have even the vaguest passing interest in astrology, you should read The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace. It’s premise is one that you will appreciate. With Mercury Rx in Virgo, I am looking at the […]

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A Musical Zodiac (Tonight)

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A Musical Zodiac, composed and conducted by Debbie Wiseman (with sleeve notes by Jonathan Cainer). Launched September 16.   A crab yearns for the moon, a seamstress stitches in a pool of sunlight, twins play — Debbie Wiseman’s musical character sketches of the signs of the Zodiac are powerful, delicate, acute. From the weaving complexity of Gemini evoked by violin and cello to the heat and power of Leo the Lion, from the shimmering otherworldliness of the Fishes to the civilised balance of Libra, Wiseman creates a Zodiac of sound. Wiseman was commissioned last autumn to write a 12-part suite by […]

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RIP Gene Wilder

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“I wanted to come out with a cane, come down slowly, have it stick into one of the bricks, get up, fall over, roll around, and they all laugh and applaud. The director asked, ‘what do you want to do that for?’ I said from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.” — Gene Wilder on his role as Willie Wonka Gene Wilder’s on-screen characters teetered between sanity and reason. All of them seemed unreliable, friable, on the point of fragmentation. Say boo to Leopold Bloom in The Producers and he might have an […]

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Astrology of Now: Re-detailing the Details

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Mercury Rx in Virgo 30 Aug- 22 September 29°-14° My goodness — what a super duper Mercury Rx. My household is swept up in a frenzied combined back-to-school, major-clear-out reading party. Here are some good things that have happened in the last few days. • You can see the floor of the garden shed — and the fancy missing trowel turned up. You can see the pond, having removed all the grass that had grown over it. • The woodpile is a model of symmetry and order • My glasses surfaced at last, so I can stop wearing the prescription […]

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