Status Updates From The Astrologer's Daughter

Donne understood that. He understood death and love and God at some new and fundamental level, some eternal level. How two people can be so close, so conjoined, that they are like a compass, one arm anchoring the other, but still allowing it the freedom to move. The two moving always together. “Thy firmness makes my circle just”, I whisper. “And makes me end, where I begunne.”’

Mum named me after a famous Persian astronomer from the 11th century: No Bevs or Joyces for my girl, she would say grimly when I complained about someone giving me stick again, at my latest school. No one ever says Avicenna, just in passing. It’s not a place, it’s not a thing, and it’s got four syllables. So I notice, when it happens.

I’m sitting so close that I catch her nose wrinkle minutely at the smell of old food and vicious rising damp masked by an ambient layer of lavender oil. She takes in the books on astral projection and fate versus free will, the tomes on reincarnation, Chinese astrology and foretelling the future Occidental versus Oriental style, and I see more thought bubbles quickly forming that say: New Age fruitcake?

Some unexpected twists

Learning about horary readings

As someone who has an interest in birth charts, I am impressed with the detail the author has gone into with this so far.

Still trying to teach myself how to pronounce the name 'Avicenna' correctly.