Paris is a Virgo city. It is perfectionist city in many senses and its people are often stylishly chic, if subtly understatedly so, and they can have an air of untouchable, almost clinical perfection. The reputation ofits gastronomic standards is legendary, and it is a city that has a critical eye. It loves beauty and its sense of sexuality is very distinct, but also very subtle. Paris can feel like all capital cities, but perhaps more than many: rather socially chilly to the visitor, who can feel somehow inspected and found wanting, often validly one assumes, in typical Virgo high standards style. The planetary load in Libra also now points to the celebration of beauty combined with the often lusty desire of Mars thrown in to the mix. For instance at the Pompidou Centre in Paris is an exhibition of the voyeuristic images of women snatched by the 82-year-old Czech photographer Miraslav Tichy in his home town of Kyjov.

Famed for their eccentricity, Tichy’s photos are often blurred, stained, cropped, dirty, decaying, even rat-chewed -- and possessed of a charm and an essential voyeuristic quality. He is reported to have said, "If you want to be famous, you must be worse at something than everyone else in the world." His capturing of the female form, in less than perfect shape, in bikinis, the odd ankle and blurred faces, are all shot with a rather sad sense of sexual furtiveness and clearly without the collusion of the photographed. He had been cautioned by the police when plying his trade, and spent some years in psychiatric hospitals and prison, for merely not conforming to the communist system and for being little other than an outsider. It is not Parisian chic and beauty he records, it is the true state of the unsculpted, primeval female shape that is revealed in casual unselfconscious honesty. Sexuality and chic is not necessarily the same thing. Paris may be an ironic setting for this exhibition. However, his work is also displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst.

Mercury goes famously retrograde on the 24th, from which point all Mercury-ruled activities go AWOL. Mercury in retreat brings in its wake delays, blocks to communications and travel plans, strikes and transport faults. Projects get stalled and all has to be done twice or thrice and nobody seems on message. Technology is not particularly co-operative either. From Libra it does suggest that negotiations, PR and diplomacy will also go rather belly-up from the 24th. Simply put, the message is to get things signed, sealed and delivered before that date if you wish to facilitate progress. However, so often things that get delayed under Mercury are somehow meant to be for reasons that we only discover retrospectively.

Venus moves into Scorpio on the 24th and from that sign puts focus more onto the sensual, the profound, the sexual, and the controversial in the arts.

From the 8th Jupiter moves into direct motion, having been in retrograde motion since May 9th. When Jupiter is retrograde it tends to bring bounty of an inner sort, i.e. internal development, but when direct, the benefits are more tangible and visible.

Capricorn rules India and with Jupiter currently gracing that sign there is good reason to look to India as a developing country under Jupiter’s growth influence, and indeed although China is always quoted as the great economic dynamo of our time, India though more quietly is seriously growing in economic and commercial stature. Some think it will soon be more economically significant on the world stage than China. In the fiscal year 2007-08 India’s GDP growth rate was a remarkable 9.1 percent. However, it remains a low-income economy. India’s religious schisms are now regularly manifested in violence, but the country has seen a time when religious relations were less adversarial. India’s culture and art has historically been a source of endless religious harmony, richness, myth and symbolism.

One of the greatest of these artistic triumphs is the Ramayana. A great work of Sanskrit poetry dating from around the middle of the 1st millennium BC, it is credited to the hand of the poet Valmiki. The epic tale involves the heroic life story of the legendary prince Rama, complete with a beautiful princess, magical powers, destiny, love, wicked stepmothers, abduction, exile, and fights for justice, rescue, reunion, triumph, redemption and the ultimate dawn of a new golden age. It ultimately expanded into a heroic tale that sees action over the entire of India. It has all the archetypical fairy tale ingredients and has been constantly revered, not only by Hindus, but also by Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians of all intellectual and social standings in India. Over the centuries Indian artists and writers have been inspired by this epic story.

Currently on view at the British Library is "The Ramayana: Love and Valor in India’s Great Epic," May 16-Sept. 14, 2008, featuring 120 17th-century miniatures. The work was originally commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar and found a home in England with Colonel James Todd, a British 19th-century author, who was totally absorbed by Rajasthan culture. A stunningly rich, energetic and colourful art fest of Indian life, landscape, history and culture, the show of course paints an archetypal tale of hope and triumph over adversity that all cultures crave to hang on to. This story has infused all Indian media from painting to dance to opera, drama and film; in the ‘80s, it was celebrated on Indian television in a 78-part series of such monumental popularity that the whole country came to a standstill to watch it. These 120 miniatures are mainly painted by Muslim artists and recall a time when relations between Hindus and Muslims in India were peaceable.

Pluto returns to Capricorn from the end of this year, and India will become a significantly high-profile country during his long 16-year stay in that sign, for good or ill, and probably, in Plutonian mood, ultimately the good will be born from the ill.

A period of particular unpredictability and volatility geophysically is around the 13th when the Sun is opposed by the unstable Uranus in Pisces, suggesting that water is likely to be the element of instability, and around the 21st, when the Sun squares up to the explosive Pluto and sociopolitical forces of some discomfort are at large. Days of progress and expansion are around the 4th when the Sun trines up in harmony to Jupiter, the 17th and 18th when Venus and Mercury trine up to Neptune, bringing real inspiration and idealism which is excellent for photography and the film world. Around the 21st when Mars trines up to Neptune energy augurs well for being successfully applied to pursuit of ideals and the inspired.

Days of great self-indulgence and OTT behavior generally are around the 7th to 11th when Venus, Mercury and Mars all square up to the extravagant Jupiter.

On the 4th the Sun and Saturn combine in Virgo in a once a year occasion that lasts in exactness for a day. This is a time of needed reality checks, seriousness and self-discipline.

Saturn is the planet equated with realism. Realists are often called pessimists. Pessimism can equal depression. When an astrologer sees much Capricorn in a chart (Saturn ruled) or much challenging Saturn input, there is often in the native a tendency towards lack of confidence, negativity of thought and even depression. How Sadness Survived, a book by Paul Keedwell, an honorary consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in London, makes the case that sad and depressed people are simply judging the world and self more accurately than nondepressed people. The amount of diagnosed "depression" a society manifests often reflects a correlating fundamental dysfunction in the way that the society works. Mental health professionals try to rehabilitate the depressed individual to adjust to the norms of society, when in fact it is society that often has the pathology. Depression, rather than a defect, can be a defense against the chronic stress that misguided people put themselves though. Depression can be the red light we need when we can no longer aspire to society pressures that are in the long term bad for us.

For these reasons Keedwell believes depression cannot be bred out of us in Darwinian terms. "Days in the wilderness" or "the black dog," as Winston Churchill called his periods of depression, can be necessary and functional. Saturn is the planet that ultimately teaches us to face up to the circumstances we find ourselves in with great reality and honesty. If it is a dysfunctional circumstance, we need to recognize it, respond and change it somehow. Our psyches crave health and unfolding, and if the constraints of our surroundings and societies pressures are totally contrary to this, depression can ensue. To paraphrase Jung, "madness is the only sane response to an insane world."

Pluto is a different phenomenon altogether. That planet is more profoundly existential and solipsist in its effects on the individual. Pluto is an evolutionary journey of the soul. The 21st may reflect this feeling somehow personally and or globally, when the Sun squares up to Pluto.

Talking of Pluto power, Barack Obama’s chosen running mate, Joseph Biden, is a force to be reckoned with. He has four personal planets in Pluto ruled Scorpio (Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars) and Pluto in Leo is antagonistic to his Mars in Scorpio -- yikes! This is a fixed intense controlling chart with a will to power and if born after 06.36 am, he also has a fixed Taurus moon. We don’t know his ascending/rising sign or midheaven. Although on the face of it he may boost Obama’s voter appeal, in the final analysis power struggles between the two men are likely. This will be particularly true if, as seems to be the case, Obama has Scorpio rising. Planetary-wise, however, November 4th looks pretty good for both men, with John McCain’s chart looking less anointed. However we must remember that we do not have the crucial birth-time information that is so vital when making final considered conclusions about certain outcomes, unless anyone out there knows for sure about Biden’s and Obama’s birth times. That would be good.

Let us not forget that Virgo, being an earth sign and the sign of the Virgin, is very linked to the purity of the planet. The ubiquitous rush to pay homage to the need to avoid global catastrophe by finding ways to slow down climate change is undeniably on. However, while economies are looking distinctly fragile, the focus on growth remains in reality the priority. The choice now seems to be either the economy or ecology, but it is more comfortable to talk of global recession than the prospect of a planet in ecological meltdown. Our own British prime minister’s advisors admitted in July that his renewable energy plans were "on the margins" of what people will tolerate. T.S. Eliot said that "human kind cannot bear much reality."

Being a month of Virgo and Libra dominance, an architectural mood is afoot. Practicality (Virgo) and beauty (Libra) is conjured up, with the added desire for a need for purity (Virgo) and harmony and balance (Libra) that is all part of this combining. The scene is set for a focus on the pursuit of visionary plans for eco-friendly cities and communities for the future.

A recent article in the British press written by arts journalist Steve Rose highlights the life and work of the Italian architect Paolo Soleri, whose groundbreaking eco-city in the Arizona dessert, called Arcosanti, was an inspiration in the ‘70s. It is 70 miles from Phoenix. Soleri was ahead of his time. Arcosanti has no cars nor roads. In the architecture, concrete apses capture heat and light and provide shade when the summer sun is at its highest. The roads are kept to the perimeters. Soleri invented the words ecotecture and arcology by combing architecture and ecology.

Soleri’s star is on the rise again, especially in light of the realities of climate change and our needed response in terms of living concepts, advising for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio for his documentary The 11th Hour about "saving" the planet. Soleri’s structures and fantasy future cities leave nature unspoilt but very accessible and are low energy. Some are envisaged to float in the open sea. His work has also included scroll paintings chronicling the intellectual evolution of mankind, on show on the guided tours of Arcosanti.

Sadly Arcosanti was never finished and with only three percent of its original design completed, its population now is lower than 60. It seems Soleri’s theoretical understanding of the malaise of cities and their ecological and sociological dysfunctionalism are his greatest contributions to our understanding of the modern city environment. He was quoted as saying re the concept of suburbia "instead of people gathering to develop a culture, they want to escape from other people. Individuals believe they can reach a level of self-sufficiency that can isolate them or their family-in an ideal place. Then they somehow expect the civilization that has made them to serve them. It’s a parasitic kind of life."

The main obstacle to continuing the Arcosanti dream was simply lack of funds. He also refutes the idea that his visions are utopian, a word he claims that by definition gives no room for evolution. He says "materialism is by definition the antithesis of green. . . . We have this unstoppable energetic, self righteous drive that’s innate to us, but which has been reoriented by limitless consumption. Per se, it doesn’t have anything evil about it. It’s a hindrance. But multiply that hindrance by billions, and you’ve got a catastrophe."

Pluto, Jupiter and Mercury in Cancer trined by Uranus in Soleri’s chart points to a genius and a healing and protective insight into the concept of home, buildings and community and their relation to mother earth.

Between the 4th and 13th Jupiter forms a trine angle to Saturn which does lend a fairly stable and upbeat optimistic period during that period.

The full Moon falls on the 15th at the 23rd degree of Pisces and the new Moon falls on the 29th at the 7h degree of Libra.

N.B. If you know your ascendant (rising sign), you should read the general trends for that sign, in conjunction with your Sun sign for a more accurate forecast. In astrology, the nature of the planet symbolizes the type of energy that is happening, the sign it is in how it is happening and the house it is in where it is happening.

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