What a delight Neptune is, with his glorious, undermining illusions. A few months ago, somebody asked me to look at the case of an aging relative who was becoming ‘confused and forgetful’. We talked about it for a while, science, in the form of a kindly, but ultimately noncommittal doctor had no answer to the problem, nor any advice it seemed, except to “monitor the situation”. The fear was, naturally enough, Alzheimer’s.
I believe that Neptune is given a fabulously good press by contemporary astrology, and one that is scarcely deserved. Certainly, Neptune’s reputation is enormously positive compared to his brother Pluto’s, and yet I am endlessly sceptical about how deserving of his many generous epithets Neptune truly is. Like the ocean, Neptune seems beautiful, yearning and restive, a vastness of potential and a personification of a gentle eternity, but it seems that way from the perspective of the safe shore. Anyone who has been beyond sight of land in a black and angry sea understands that Neptune’s power is just as dread as his brother’s; equally as alien and inhumane.
An awful night. I slept very badly because of a series of anxious dreams about flooding. At one point I was in a pedestrian plaza that I did not recognise: there were tall buildings on either side and I had to run to reach a footbridge before a great swathe of dirty water reached me.... Continue Reading →
Today I would like to focus on an issue highlighted by several comments and questions that I have received on this journal and by email. Here are two example questions which illustrate the broad principle I should like to expand upon: Jacque asks in response to Advanced Vulcanology: aspects of Pluto: "I have Sun... Continue Reading →
Today I would like to look in some detail at the various dynamics of the relating planets – Venus and Mars – in their applications to Neptune. Whilst not nearly as abrasively uncomfortable as Venus and Mars to Pluto connections, this blend does create its own unique difficulty and with understanding, there is certainly enormous... Continue Reading →
For many months now I have been watching the future. Inevitably this is a key concern of the astrologer, the Uranian, the Aquarian, the 11th house individual, but actually, this coming month there is an astrological event of staggering magnitude in the making. So far as I can work out, 27th of May will be... Continue Reading →
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Shakespeare: Hamlet 1:5) One of the great challenges of my life, as an astrologer, is the ongoing pressure that I feel to reconcile my understanding of astrology with a world that - for the most part - has no... Continue Reading →
Today, I would like to look a little at the various manifestations of Neptune in the 3rd house. It is never kind to mock the afflicted. However, since I can speak entirely subjectively - I have Neptune in the first few degrees of the 3rd in Scorpio - I feel I am allowed some absolution.... Continue Reading →
Imagine this scenario: someone you know has come to see you and on their way over they have got stuck in traffic, had an argument with a co-worker on the phone and discovered that their husband spent the housekeeping on a hooker, then they call in at your house, and actually, they like you very... Continue Reading →
Transits are no big mystery. Even an arc or progression is simply a transit writ large on the life story and the transit itself, regardless of magnitude, is simply an opportunity to experience an ongoing evolution of nativity. Put another way, a transit is only an opportunity for experience, one that you weren't born with,... Continue Reading →
This weekend I conducted an experiment. It involved a trip to the outer reaches of our solar system and I travelled there in my car (a VolksWagen) and it makes a wonderful illustration of how astrology in the sky can connect so seamlessly with the small mechanics of our lives. One of the key understandings... Continue Reading →
Just before I woke this morning I dreamt I was in an asylum, and the nurse, a woman I seemed to know and who had, in my unquestioned impression, a fearsome reputation for being strict and rather distant, smiled at me in the most warm manner and I realised that she was quite beautiful, her... Continue Reading →
There is a consistent thread running through much of the new age spiritualism of our times, it is most easily rendered apparent through the understanding of the dichotomy between the head and the heart, the measurable of rational science and the immeasurable of non-rational wisdom; I have more than a passing familiarity with both; and... Continue Reading →
Today I would like to discuss a somewhat more subtle insight of the astrology; one which really questions the tendency to try and break down the experience of interpretation in a clearly Virgoan manner; this as much as anything else creates (for myself) a sense that Mercury cannot approach the astrologer's craft fully, and certainly... Continue Reading →
As I have discussed in many articles previously, there is no better way to gain perspective on a planetary focus than to find an instance where it is overexpressed due to peregrination; usually this works very well, but in the case of Pluto, and to a lesser extent with Uranus and Neptune as well, the... Continue Reading →
I find that astrology and photography have much in common. They are both concerned with an ongoing attempt to capture the intangible; both rely upon rules that must be learned, subsumed and then transcended in order to attain mastery; they are both concerned with the sublime and perhaps most pertinently of all, neither, whether approached... Continue Reading →
Without question, the most difficult aspect of my work as an astrologer is to do with managing people's expectations, this is inordinately tricky, because it is very straightforward to make a few fairly accurate observations, but people want more than that at the same time as they want less. This might sound contradictory, but it's... Continue Reading →
