A Rectified Horoscope of W. G. Sebald

I forget exactly when I first discovered the German writer, W. G. Sebald. It was in the few years after his death from a heart attack in 2001, at age 57. He had been publishing books in German since the late 1980s, and it was only with the English publication of his book The Emigrants

The Killing Stone*

‘The killing stone has broken, having shouldered too many evils,’ warns the priest’s old wife. ‘The earthquakes, plagues, despair and now the smolder- ing wreckage of a war. Its useful life as prison for the nine-tailed fox is done. What god or demon broke the ancient stone, and to what end? A new age has

Emily Dickinson, Part III: The Poet’s Moon-Neptune Square

This aspiring to achieve the height of refinement in her craft is squarely in the realm of astrological Neptune, which refines the energies it touches and is said to impart sublime artistic and spiritual visions.

Emily Dickinson’s horoscope, Part 1

I read Emily Dickinson’s poem “To Make a Prairie” today after seeing it referenced in an interview with the writer Ian Frazier: To Make a Prairie Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees

Pisces (poem)

The waters of a placid lake collect. A river’s flow, in time, carves the ravine. The dredge and dam attempt to intervene; in intervening, finitude reflect. The oceans’ waters have no natural bounds; though measured, distances between the stars incomprehensible. The tides of wars flood countryside then ebb away; their sounds and sights from memory

Take Care, Reader (poem)

[This poem is addressed to fellow astrologers.] Take care, reader — to cast nativities in no mere game. What you pretend to grasp slips like an eel. Tie yourself to the mast of tradition. Let the old divinities speak through you, and when it begins to seem you have divined a life’s intent, then know

Pisces ♓︎

The waters of the placid lake collect.A river’s flow, in time, carves the ravine.The dredge and dam attempt to intervene;In intervening, finitude reflect. The oceans’ waters have no natural bounds;Though measured, distances between the starsIncomprehensible. The tides of warsFlood countrysides then ebb away; their soundsAnd sights from memory also fadeWhen they’re allowed. The music of

Saturn and Its Signs (poem)

Adjacent signs always present contrasts: one masculine, one feminine; they share neither their elements nor qualities, as if the second works to fix the flaws of the first. Capricorn, Aquarius: these two are the exception in that they each give their real estate as domicile to Saturn, most distant of the seven planets of the

SCORPIO ♏︎

After the autumn harvest, nature sheds Her foliage ‘til what’s left is black or pale — Denuded ground, bare limbs — this fallen veil Reveals the scaffolding of life, and death Becomes an object of reflection, not yet Dogmatic, but direct and unflinching. Beyond the facile truths of youth, inching Toward intimacy, one seeks to