Cecilia van Tiel

About me

I was born just before one in the morning on the 13th of May, 1987, in Maastricht — Taurus Sun, Scorpio Moon, Capricorn rising. If you read charts you’ll recognise that trio as three different kinds of stubborn: the Taurus who wants the good coffee and the quiet afternoon, the Scorpio who needs to know what’s actually going on under the surface, and the Capricorn who will teach herself the whole subject from scratch rather than ask for the shortcut. That’s a fair description of how I ended up here.

The Taurus part of me has always wanted roots — a kitchen I know, a chair by a window, a dog asleep on the floor. Life had other plans. I spent most of my twenties and thirties moving: cities, countries, time zones. I came back to continental Europe in the spring of 2026 and I’m doing the very Capricorn thing of looking, slowly and deliberately, for the place I’ll finally stop — somewhere with a garden, whether that turns out to be a city or the middle of nowhere.

How I came to astrology

I’m self-taught, which with a Capricorn ascendant is almost a foregone conclusion — the textbook line on that placement is “spends her whole life studying and instructing herself,” and I can’t really argue. No course, no guru. Just years of books, of casting charts for friends, and of checking what the sky was doing against what people were actually living through. Scorpio Moon made me distrust anything vague; if a reading didn’t hold up against a real week in a real life, I threw it out and started again. That habit is most of what I know.

My approach

I read the transits first — what the sky is genuinely doing on a given day — and only then how that lands for each sign. I don’t do doom, and I don’t do flattery. If a day brings friction, I’ll tell you; if it’s a good day to push, I’ll tell you that too. The technical machinery — the squares, the sextiles, the retrograde mechanics — stays under the hood. You don’t need the vocabulary to use the forecast, any more than you need to understand an engine to drive the car. (I happen to like engines, but more on that below.)

I also keep my working life deliberately simple and quiet. I write alone, early, with as little technology between me and the page as I can manage — a small, low-tech, solitary setup that suits both the temperament and the actual quality of the work.

At DailyScopes

I became editor of DailyScopes.com in May 2026. My main job is the daily horoscopes — the short, useful read you check with your first coffee. DailyScopes is part of a small family of horoscope sites, and the brief here is specifically daily: practical, grounded, written for the day in front of you rather than the year ahead. That suits me. I’d rather help you see this particular Tuesday a little more clearly than make grand predictions about the next decade.

Away from the charts

When I’m not writing, I cook — properly, the Taurus way, the kind of slow weeknight cooking that fills a flat with smell and takes the edge off a day. I do yoga, mostly to keep the nervous system in order. And, to the surprise of people who’ve only met the calm-editor version of me, I’m a motorsports fan — the side that likes speed, risk and watching people fight for the apex. Quiet kitchen, loud Sundays. Both are me.

I grew up with a dog and miss having one daily; the constant moving never made it fair to the animal. Finding a home where that finally makes sense again is high on the list. I’m Dutch, so Dutch is my first language; I work in English and get by in German — useful, growing up where three borders nearly meet.

My own chart

If you’re curious what all of the above looks like as an actual birth chart, mine is no secret — you can run it yourself: 13 May 1987, 00:50, Maastricht. Taurus Sun in the fourth house (the homebody who wants a kitchen), Capricorn rising (the self-taught grafter), a fistful of Sagittarius down in the eleventh and twelfth (the years abroad). It’s a fairly honest map of the person writing your horoscope, which feels like the right way to do this job.

Contact

The fastest way to reach me about a reading, a correction, or a suggestion is the feedback form. I read everything, even when I can’t reply at length.