Gifts for Mankind. Venus in a masculine Guise, from André Gide.

André Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 “for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight.” He also wrote the first gay novel ever published. In his outstanding biography, ANDRĖ GIDE.…

Gifts for Mankind. Venus at her Most Fashionable – from Yves Saint Laurent.

I recently watched a documentary on Yves Saint Laurent and wondered why he seemed ‘not present’. Surely the French fashion designer who is regarded as being among the foremost fashion designers of the twentieth century should not be so ‘absent’ when his models are on the catwalk? Then I discovered that he abused both alcohol and…

The Hero with Joseph Campbell’s Face.

Joseph John Campbell was an American professor of literature who also studied and worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His best-known work is his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth. He is most famous for his quote, “Follow your bliss”, which could be…

Learning Ad Infinitum.  Boccaccio.

Together with Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio is part of the so-called “Three Crowns” of Italian Renaissance Literature and Poetry. Their works initiated the dramatic change western civilisation was about to undergo. They revolutionised literature even before the development of the printing press. Boccaccio is best known for The Decameron. Together with his contemporary friend and…

A Tribute to Richard Llewellyn

A Tribute to Richard Llewellyn 14th August 1925 – 9th February 2021 by Joyce Hopewell APA and the astrological world have lost a very special person. Richard Llewellyn, founder of the English Huber School (which became the Astrological Psychology Association) passed away on 9th February. He was instrumental in making the Huber Method of Astrological…

Jupiter at his literary best. Lawrence Durrell.

Lawrence Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer. Although he never won the Nobel Prize for Literature – his books were considered too ‘heterodox’ – by the end of the 20th century, he was a bestselling author and one of the most celebrated writers in English. The great French writer Gustav Flaubert said: “Language is…

Alan Leo (1860-1917) and Kim Farnell’s biography, Modern Astrologers: The Lives of Alan & Bessie Leo (2019)

As Nicholas Campion wrote in his review of Kim Farnell’s Modern Astrologers for the Astrology Quarterly 84/3 (Autumn 2019): “Alan Leo was a monumental figure in the history of modern Western astrology, his influence still felt in all forms of esoteric and karmic astrology… his emphasis on self-knowledge and the soul is an ancestor of…