The Wedding Chart: Private Vows, Public Commitment

It was gorgeous: the frocks, the hats, the uniforms, the horses, the cars, the carriages; the music, the abbey, the sweet little choir boys – and a superb sermon by the Bishop of London.

"...Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves..." 

The Duchess already has the poise of a queen. (How Capricorn is that?) And the Duke looked delighted. It all went like clockwork.

Yep, they got married today and the also turned into the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, titles given to them by Granny Queen.

What did it all mean?

Well here it is – the chart for the wedding itself; the moment when the Archbishop of Canterbury said, "I now pronounce you man and wife." I made it 11.20am on the dot.

Royal Wedding Astrology

Here are previous posts I've written on the Royal Wedding, which you might like to peruse before the day itself.


Celebrating Power
A general look at the day itself.


Juno Lends a Helping Hand
The marriage asteroid is deeply involved.


The Bling of Power
That ring.


Kate Middleton's Birth Chart: Cool, Calm, Sensitive
No birth time, but you can still see a lot.

Right that's it. My Aquarian planets are bouncing up and down.

Royal Wedding: Celebrating Power

Last summer, I predicted a royal wedding this year. That was partly on the basis of how alarmingly these times in Great Britain resemble that watershed year 1981 – brutal financial restrictions from the government, blood on the streets, looming unemployment and an uneasy Liberal coalition (back then it was with a party called the SDP, today it's with the Conservative government).

It's all to do with Saturn crossing the UK's early Libra Ascendant. We're on a 29-year Saturn cycle. If you want to read what I said, click here. It was mainly about the economy. I did suggest there would be belt-tightening all round. And news broke just today that average income fell for the first time this year since, you guessed it, 1981.

So I ask myself, what does the marriage of a king in waiting have to say about us, his subjects to be?

RIP Poly Styrene

"Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard, but I say, Oh bondage, up yours!"

Thank you Poly Styrene, for giving me something to shout as I drive up to the school gates to pick up my little girls.

The pioneer of feminist punk died today at the age of 53. If you ever wondered what a Uranus (unconventional), Mars (aggressive), Venus (female) conjunction in Leo (show off) might look like in real life, take a peep at this video. It's from 1978 when she was all of 20 or 21. I'd forgotten that one punk look was to dress like a cross between a mad old lady and a toddler.

Here is her astonishing chart - no birth time sadly.

Primavera: Love is All Around

Yesterday, we walked through purple violets, pale yellow primroses and cowslips, pink campion and bluebells. White petals from the mayflower tree spattered the ground beneath our feet and scented the air around us.

Truly, the goddess of beauty, Venus, rules.

Who doesn't love this time of year when the goddess of fertility and love waves her wand and the world burst forth flowers?

Botticelli's Allegory of Spring or Primavera, which lives in the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence and also in the visual memory of almost everyone.

The Sun has moved from Mars-ruled Aries to Venus-ruled Taurus. This is the time of the fixed earth sign, when spring is at its most bountiful.

Pallas Athena and the God of War

Imagine you are trotting down the Appian Way in Rome sometime around 202 BC. It's a hot spring day and you're working up quite a sweat. Your toga is flapping behind you and your slave, a rather dashing Gaul (with rippling muscles and bedroom eyes - hang on a minute…back to the story), is having trouble keeping up with you.

You are in urgent need of some advice from an astrologer. You've managed to become embroiled yet again in a row. It's because of your hot temper and your unquenchable libido. You have the Sun and Moon in Aries.

Math Cat

Heart is a Scorpio.

My five year old loves our cat, but her idea of bonding with him is a little unusual.

I came upon her yesterday talking to him.

"What's two plus three?"

The cat said purr.

"Very good. Now, what's five plus four?"

Purr.

"No silly, it's nine."

Why Pallas Athene is the Astrologer's Asteroid

Pallas Athene from the Temple of Aphaia c.500 BC

One of the readers of this blog recently pointed out that pattern-recognition was a key component of astrology – and my tiny astrologer's mind went click and then clickety click click. I got excited.

Because there is an asteroid associated with pattern-recognition, so theoretically astrologers should have this asteroid somehow emphasised in the natal chart – and there should be a recognisable pattern.

Pallas Athene is a lump of rock that whizzes through space between Jupiter and Mars. A lot of other lumps   of rock whizz in that particular part of the solar system, but she is one of the big ones. Along with her sisters – Ceres, Vesta and Juno – she was discovered and named in the 19th century, but largely ignored by astrologers until quite recently.

In previous posts, I've shown how Vesta is associated with chefs and Juno with marriage (click the names to read the articles), so let's see if Pallas really is the goddess of pattern. 

12 Ways to Feel the Magic of Neptune in Pisces Now

Neptune's Horses by Walter Crane.

Neptune, the great god of the sea, has dived into the ocean of Pisces. This is a moment laced with magic for each of us. How and where can we find it? 

That great numinous beast (with the help of his white horses) spreads glamour, confusion, dissipation, illusion, an indefinable feeling of God, the desire to disappear into the great ocean of the universe. Where Neptune goes, boundaries dissolve, what was once reliable disappears, mirages manifest. All this is more so now that he is super-powered in his own sign.

Brotherhood of Romantics: Neptune in Pisces Redux

Daydreaming by DG Rossetti

London 1848: capital of the largest empire the world has ever seen, a city where the rich live in lace and cream and fripperies, children work as chimney sweeps and bootblacks, where the streets run with sewage, and where everyone is – more or less – for sale.

Just as today – the great planet Neptune has returned to the oceans of its own sign Pisces. Surely a time when the planet of the imagination, dreams and visions would  express itself through the collective most powerfully.

One September evening right in the very heart of this teeming, moiling metropolis, three young men were lounging around talking about art. One of them, John Everett Millais, whose parents' house it was, brought out a book of engravings of medieval frescoes.

The discussion he had with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt that night led to the forming of the first self-consciously avant-garde art movement – the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – and would influence public taste for the rest of the century.

April Horoscopes

Kablam!! New Moon April 3, 2011.

There's an explosive New Moon on the 3rd which sets up a bonfire in one sector of your chart -- to find out where to roast the marshmallows and avoid getting incinerated click here.

Just for starters, there's Saturn opposed by just about everyone, but absolutely exactly by the Sun and Moon. Saturn's exalted in Libra, the sign of peace, love and relationships. Sun is exalted in Aries, the sign of war, the individual and going it alone.

I think the Sun has just a teensy bit more power on his side, don't you?

But Saturn, as we know, can wait.