Cosmic Alignments: As Above, So Below...

This is a picture of Mystic Meg. She was an icon to us British kids in the '80's - flamboyant, and convincing. The BBC obituary described her career in fortune telling, with the term "quintessential", a lovely word that has it's roots are in middle latin and comes from "a fifth element, essence or ether"..

The essence and the ether, indeed...So here it is. I never thought I would be someone writing about tarot or astrology. As a child, horoscopes belonged to the same cultural cupboard as margarine. Slightly fake and not that good for you. Tabloid clairvoyance - precisely the lair of Mystic Meg - was a place where a cat was clearly in my future or my immediate destiny was wrapped around the lucky number 7. Something you read on the back of a cereal box, while waiting for the kettle to boil.

For most of my life, I assumed astrology was either harmless entertainment or a kind of easy, spititual reassurance that helped explain away the seeming randomness of life events. It offered comfort to those who sought comfort there, and that was fine. It didn't need judging.

But there has been a shift in my thinking. Not in a sudden and miraculous conversion, but in the slower way that curiosity grows when other frameworks begin to feel insufficient. I have always been left wanting around the absurd hypocrisies of any and all organised religions, and perhaps as we grow older, we are pulled gradually toward something. Something that gives meaning around our moments. In my case, it was the ancient mystery of celestial bodies. The physical and the metaphysical universes.

Tarot arrived, not as a fortune-telling device, but as a vintage deck of hand-painted, French cards, chanced upon at a local flea market. They were lovely to look at, but a nagging sense of illiteracy began to somewhat wear me down. I don't remember not being able to read, but this was clearly just "looking at the pictures".

Astrology and Tarot are two separate worlds. One studies planetary movement, the other reads meaning into shuffled cards. But the two disciplines are just different dialects of the same language. Both systems are symbolic maps that help us understand who we are, what we’re experiencing, and what might come next with the help of overarching patterns and symbols. Astrology tracks celestial motion and cosmic timing. Tarot captures archetypal moments and human emotion. Together, they interpret a story. The stars above and the cards below begin to echo each other.

At the end of the day, both media come from humanity’s oldest impulse - the desire to find meaning in pattern. What got Leonardo Fibonacci, John Nash and Alan Turing out of bed each morning. Astrology looks upward, mapping the heavens to the human heart. Tarot turns that impulse inward, reflecting the universe’s rhythm. Both systems use elements, cycles, and symbols to tell stories about transformation. The Sun, the Moon, and the Star exist in both -- not in happy coincidence, but as universal metaphors for clarity, mystery, and renewal. I like this. It's the Switzerland of spiritual beliefs. Neutral, safe, unprovocative. Cheesy? - maybe.. but nicely boxed.

But February, it turns out, has been full of atmosphere. Of re-sets, shifts and shedding, as the planets aligned and the zodiacal snake gave way to the spirit and gallop of the fire horse.

Even if you have never glanced at a birth chart in your life, you may have felt it - the sense of acceleration, the strange emotional pressure, the feeling that something is rearranging itself behind the scenes. Astrologers have been pointing, almost in unison, to the sheer density of February's celestial activity - eclipses and conjunctions - a kind of cosmic clustering that lends itself, at the very least, to metaphor.

But we need to be a bit cautious with metaphors. They are useful, no question, but they can stunt our thinking rather than help develop it. They can hide as much as they can reveal. I mean it is not as though Saturn is personally responsible for your inbox, or that Mercury is sabotaging your relationships out of spite. Astrology and Tarot are not machines of causation - at least not for me. They are more lenses of reflection. Ways of marking time. Both astrology and tarot, are practices that aknowledge that ever since camps met fires, we have (in all religions and spiritual practices) always looked upwards when trying to make sense of what is going on down here.

So as we move into March, I am just following the wagon. I am not being told "what's going to happen" but just to notice what is happening. To acknowledge times auspicious to letting go of people, places and things. To be called to learn better truths and ways to reflect. To practice gratitude and compassion. I mean if those were the practices of our preachers, there would not be so many empty seats in the church.

I find that I can reclaim agency in astrology and my You-tube Tarot card readings. Some readers resonate better than others. Unlike the immovable dogmas of religious text, it asks not for blind acceptance - it requires me to ask better questions. What should end? What should begin, what is ready to be seen. All good thresholds.

Ooh look... a black cat..