Astrology blog
Planets, houses and aspects in plain language — from your first chart to a year-ahead forecast.
GuidesSix different sites will tell you an Aquarius is independent, intellectual, humanitarian, eccentric and a little aloof — usually in the same order, often in the same words. If you're an Aquarius and you've read those lists thinking "that's only half right, and the half that fits doesn't fit all t...
Oksana Miatova13 min
GuidesThree friends, three different January birthdays, three different Chinese zodiac animals — and at least one of them looked it up on a different website and got a different answer. Somewhere in that confusion is a real question: what are the Chinese zodiac signs by year, how do you find yours, and...
Oksana Miatova18 min
GuidesIf someone asked you, over coffee, what astrology actually is, you'd probably know roughly what to say — but only roughly. Most of us have absorbed a vague mix of horoscope columns, Instagram bios, and a friend's confident pronouncements about Mercury retrograde. None of it quite adds up to a cle...
Oksana Miatova23 min
GuidesNadia opens a third browser tab. The first article said the Scorpio birthstone is topaz, and showed a glowing pinkish-orange imperial topaz the colour of late autumn sun. The second said it's citrine, the bright lemon-yellow stone, with a brief footnote that citrine was added to the November list...
Oksana Miatova22 min
Birth-time rectificationYou sit down to build your birth chart, the form asks for your time of birth, and you stall. Maybe there's nothing written down. Maybe there's a number, but your mum shrugs and says "sometime in the morning, I think." Maybe the certificate in the drawer has a date and no time at all.
Oksana Miatova11 min
CompatibilityIt's a Wednesday lunchtime, café near the office. Maya, queueing at the till, is texting a friend about Sam — fellow journalist, fellow byline on the long investigation they've been running for six weeks. Long meetings, late edits, the kind of working intimacy that creeps in without anyone naming...
Oksana Miatova14 min
GuidesSomewhere around your birthday, the Sun returns to the exact spot in the zodiac it sat at the minute you were born. A solar return chart is the snapshot of the whole sky at that moment — and astrologers read it as a one-year theme map running from this birthday to the next. It isn't always on you...
Oksana Miatova15 min
GuidesAnna opens a third browser tab. The first article said the Libra birthstone is opal. The second listed eight stones — opal, rose quartz, lapis lazuli, sapphire, tourmaline, peridot, jade, citrine — all apparently «the Libra stone». The third was firm: «Sapphire, if you were born in September, eve...
Oksana Miatova20 min
GuidesHannah opens a third browser tab. The first article said the Taurus birthstone is emerald. The second listed ten stones — emerald, rose quartz, jade, lapis lazuli, sapphire, peridot, garnet, citrine, malachite, tiger's eye, all apparently «the Taurus stone». The third was quieter and stranger: «E...
Oksana Miatova23 min
GuidesIt is nine on a Wednesday in October. A 34-year-old woman in Manchester is sitting at her parents' kitchen table, three months after her divorce was finalised, in the slow logistical middle of finding her own flat. A mug of herbal tea has gone cold beside a notebook with two underlined words, *wh...
Oksana Miatova20 min
CompatibilityShe sends her best friend a screenshot — a small argument, mostly resolved, slightly still itching. Her friend replies with a shrug emoji and "you two are so different though, lol". Twenty minutes later, in bed with the lamp still on, she types `pisces aries love compatibility` into Google. The f...
Oksana Miatova12 min
Birth-time rectificationYou find a birth-chart site, type in your date and place, and then the form asks for your time of birth. You don't have it. The cursor blinks in the empty field, and it's easy to assume that's the end of it, that without the time your chart is a write-off and there's no point going on.
Oksana Miatova10 min