Author: Christina

Dr Zhivago: Venus In The Midst Of Mars

Like flowers the ice crystals on the window sparkle in the winter sun, transform into a sunny field of daffodils. Spring. Early-morning, low sun between rows of straight, rough-barked pines flashes as the camera moves. Treeless, snowy, dead flat land with a horizon straight as a ruler. A single tiny black dot is the only thing that moves: a troika carrying away love. Lingering images like these tell us that Yuri Zhivago is a poet, and that David Lean is a great film director. I watched Doctor Zhivago this weekend for the first time in decades. We cried and cried. It is […]

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Greece

Here — Archipelago of Dreams — is a post I wrote about Greece in 2011. The chart I drew up puts transiting Uranus, the disruptor, on Greece’s natal Saturn today. All change. And here is one about Europe. Believe it or not they are both quite relevant tonight as the left sweeps back into power in Greece, promising to end austerity.  

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Randy Andy

HRH Prince Andrew has dodgy taste when it comes to friendship. Right now he must really be regretting the day Ghislaine Maxwell introduced him to billionaire child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Now he finds himself embroiled in a distasteful scandal. One current transit to his chart illustrates just how dangerous so-called beneficial planets can be.   Andrew has Leo rising, appropriately for Prince of the royal blood. So he is currently having a Jupiter transit to the ascendant. Good, one might think, the “greater benefic” coming to play.  In fact it’s absolutely ghastly, exposing the private man to the public gaze. Furthermore Jupiter is currently […]

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Fiery, Inspired

There’s a ring of inspirational fire energy around the zodiac until June. It’s burning long and bright. Uranus the awakener in Aries, Saturn the teacher in Sagittarius, Jupiter the joyous, in Leo. A Gift I Woke: — Night, lingering, poured upon the world Of drowsy hill and wood and lake Her moon-song, And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers On the birches. Gently the dawn held out to me A golden handful of bird’s-notes. – Leonora Speyer Leonora Speyer was a virtuoso violinst before winning a Pulitzer prize for her poetry in 1926. Note the fiery trine from music and […]

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The Mighty Pen, Symbol of Reason

Twelve people at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down on January 7. In the same week, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received the first 50 lashes of his 1000-lash sentence for blasphemy, ironically, an echo of the Charlie Hebdo cover that caused such offense in 2011 — “1000 lashes if you don’t die laughing”. Not to mention the on-going incarceration of Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayad in Saudi also, for blasphemous verses. Islamofascism (still apparently a contested term, but loosely defined as a political ideology based on Islam) has been gaining in strength for decades, but its […]

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Oh Hygeia

The goddess of nursing clearly decided she needed a personal word with me after that last post: I broke my wrist ice skating yesterday and spent the rest of the day at A&E! Hygeia turned up in the shape of a sweet bearded doctor. More later, I am off for round two.  

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Charlie Hebdo

Today 12 people were gunned down in a magazine office in Paris. Charlie Hebdo is a well-known satirical magazine, the equivalent of, say, Private Eye or National Lampoon. Two, or maybe three, murderers shouted Arabic slogans as they left the building. Charlie Hebdo has a history of pissing Islamists off, so it’s assumed that this is yet another attack on Europe by fundamentalist muslims. Laughter is central to freedom: they have struck at the heart of our culture. And they were right: ridicule is the best weapon against fascism. Here is a chart of the attack. Time is approximate. I […]

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Hygeia, The Asteroid of Health

The image of Hygeia is a constant in modern times. Although we do not always recognise her for the goddess that she is, perhaps there are more images of her in the media than any other Greek goddess except Aphrodite. In the Greek pantheon, she is one of the daughters of Aesculapius, the doctor. One sister is Panacea “cure-all”, another is Iaso (recuperation) and she is, of course, the goddess of hygiene — which frankly sounds rather dreary. However, the Greeks didn’t think so. They probably did not mean OCD style disinfection, after all no one really knew about germs […]

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Five Things To Do in 2015

Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was a pleasant one for you. As of today we are into the swing of the new year: already the bulbs at the end of the dining table — paper whites and hyacinths — have bloomed and their sharp green leaves are an augury of spring; my youngest went to school this morning with her apple polished and (most of) her homework done; and D (Jupiter in Pisces) has bought himself two pairs of shoes in the sales. So it really is time to think of the year ahead, and leave behind what we can’t fix […]

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January Horoscopes: Riding The Bear

  The White Bear said: “Are you afraid?” “No, that I am not,” said she. “Keep tight hold of my fur, and then there is no danger,” said he. And thus she rode far, far away, until they came to a great mountain. Then the White Bear knocked on it, and a door opened, and they went into a castle where there were many brilliantly lighted rooms which shone with gold and silver… You may have read a fairy tale called East of the Sun and West of the Moon in which the beautiful girl is sold by her father […]

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