It’s not the conscious changes made in their lives by men and women which really shape them… but a long, slow mutation of emotion, hidden all-penetrative—Nadine Gordimer. All-penetrative change is inscribed across the heavens this month. The sun slips into sensuous Taurus on April 19th and a Scorpio full moon on April 24th supports the transformative power of intention to clear the clutter from not only our physical space, but what is outworn and unfulfilled in our hearts, so that we can move more freely again. This month’s lunation squares Pluto, primeval god of destruction and regeneration ..read more

Courage is found in unlikely places—J.R. R Tolkien.  On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse moves across North America, passing over Mexico, United States, and Canada. This is the day that a new moon in Aries slips between the familiar body of the Earth and the fierce light of the Sun. Eclipses act like wild cards. They drop into our birth charts and catapult us from our place of comfort. They alter the march of world events.  They dispatch a charge of volatility through the atmosphere. On Monday, April 8th, as millions of people gather in a darkening world to witness the quiver-tou ..read more

The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower and bright are the windows of night in her tower―J.R.R. Tolkien. The light has returned here in the north, consecrating a profusion of bridal blossoms, light as breath, that bless the earth with pink and white petals. Dandelions and white daisies thrust from cracks in the pavements, tender leaves furl exuberantly skywards suffusing woodlands and neat suburban gardens in glorious greens. Nature awakens, we adjust our calendars, reorientate our routines. On March 20th, the astrological sun moved into Aries, marking the transitional moment of the Ve ..read more

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another—Anatole France.   We are two moon cycles away from the spring Equinox. On March 20th, the sun enters fiery Aries at the start of the astrological new year and the beginning of spring. As the days lengthen here in the north, and the seasons begin to shift, we may already be feeling the urge to spring clean our homes or to unburden ourselves of something that has been pressing heavily on our heart. For so many, this has been a ..read more

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them—Joni Mitchell. The first Full Moon of 2024 sails across a mantle of stars tonight, blessing the earth as she travels through heart-centred, self-mythologising Leo. The essence of Leo is vibrant self-expression. Yet in our light-poisoned cities, in a culture where so many are infected by a sense of alienation, numbed, and dumbed by a relentless press of competition or spurred by a false sense of lack to consume more and more, our spontaneous self-expression may be injured or lie dormant. In medical astrology, Leo rules the heart, th ..read more

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. Anne Lamott. “This year will be better…” we say hopefully, perhaps as a talisman to ward off potential heartbreak and hardship. The mood this month is serious, focused on the goal-directed activity, underscored by a determined Capricorn new Moon, on January 11th augmented by Mars in Capricorn, a celestial prompt to get things done and as author, Doris Lessing reminds us, “whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are ..read more

To this world you belong. To this moment, in this place where you already stand, something greater has ushered you—Toko-pa Turner. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. A demure fir tree bejewelled with baubles becomes a dazzling diva. The unassuming delivery man wears a gaudy novelty sweater with “I’m sexy and I snow it” emblazoned across the chest. In small gardens, dancing reindeer and corpulent Santas twinkle, and fairy lights garland trees and hedges. As the old year dies in the darkness of midwinter, rituals—quirky and quaint—secure threads of continuity, create meaning, beguile u ..read more

Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are — creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb. Creatures who hope—Pattiann Rogers. Darkness comes early now. As we descend into “fall”, Nature responds to the ancient rhythm of life and death. Shoals of fluttering leaves twist and turn like golden minnows and delicate spiderwebs spangled with diamonds of dew shimmer in the hedgerows. The brilliant greens of summer have turned to marmalade and plum revealing the ..read more

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending—J.R.R. Tolkien. As mist curls in spectral plumes across swathes of rust-coloured forest, the plaintive roar of a rutting deer echoes across the valley. In the north, Scorpio season draws us into rot and decay. This is the realm of dragons and serpents, scorpions that sting, endings that ambush, darkness that seeps from night to day. October is the month of mulching and composting, of endings and letting go. The ancient festival of Samhain, at the midpoint between the equinox and the winter solstice, marks the death of summer and the ..read more

The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see. Adrienne Rich. We’ve entered eclipse season, the season of shadow. As the days grow shorter a small flock of wild geese have returned to the estuary near my home. Spider webs glitter with dew in the misty mornings and scarlet hawthorn berries hang in bright bundles from bare branches. As the shadows lenghten, the light of the sun will be darkened by the moon. This is the first eclipse of the autumn and falls at 21° Libra. Eclipses arrive in pairs, and more rarely, in threes, and there is an eclipse every six months when a new or full moon conjoins ..read more