Tag: history

America’s Pluto Transit: The Ravaging

A few weeks ago, The New York Times carried an editorial by Charles Blow, which begins like this: “America, as we knew it, is lost. “Not completely gone and not irrevocably ended, but forever altered. Or, maybe it is fair to say that our concept of America itself was a concoction, that it was always one solid body blow away from buckling at the knees.” And here is the penultimate paragraph. “I am saying…that the best time to truly rebuild a thing is when it has been destroyed, when the slate is clear and people are champing for change.” He […]

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Thinking Aloud: A Stroll Around the Bodleian

Just thinking aloud while walking around Oxford, reflecting on how ideas are categorised.
Of course, the Bodleian Library has one of the greatest collections of books on magic, alchemy and astrology.
Enjoy!
 
The post Thinking Aloud: A Stroll Aro…

Phenomena: The “News”

This morning I woke up and turned on the radio. The news poured out like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:  pestilence, famine, war, death. So I changed over to a music station and had my mind cleaned by Bach. This set me wondering though, about the effect of constantly hearing the news on the psyche. Because the news we hear — at least where I live — is pretty much by definition bad: another tsunami, another corrupt politician, another child missing. Indeed, if our world view is shaped by what we hear on the news, then the world is […]

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Barren and Fruitful Signs

At the fag-end of this luscious autumn, with the scent of rotting apples in the air, and a surprising, last flush of magenta roses on the other side of the pond, my thoughts have turned, briefly, to fertility. Here is what the English Renaissance astrology William Lilley, had to say about the fecundity or otherwise of the signs. Aries By reason Mars, a sterill planet hath that for his house, and the Sun for Exaltation, is rather a Sign of Barrennesse than otherwise. Taurus Is reputed more fruitful than barren, being the house of Venus, who is fruitful, and the exaltation […]

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Juno in the Garden (Part One)

“Th’ whole world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis” Captain Boyle in Juno and the Paycock In Sean O’Casey’s play, Juno and the Paycock, Juno Boyle is the matriarch of a broken family. While her children are wrecked and her husband is a wastrel, she carries on providing, protecting and planning. The roles of the divine Juno — hugely popular among the Romans — are notoriously multifarious, but perhaps not so dissimilar from her Irish namesake. She was protector of the community, matrons, demobbed soldiers, and newborn babies. She was a goddess of childbirth and marriage, civic order; spear-bearer, consort, […]

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