This month’s newsletter is a quick retrospective in an attempt to create context for the things that I am crafting as an astrologer today.
I live an artist’s life because I chose to. And while the romance of what this may sound like to you, depending on how you envision an “artist’s life”, the reality of how this plays out in my own existence is what I wanted to share with you readers.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.”
-Maya Angelou
After Maya Angelou died, I went to her estate’s sale. I wanted to visit the rooms, gardens and hallways that she walked herself. I bought her copy of the classic Italian cookbook The Silver Spoon and pressed some weeds inside of it that I found growing by her back kitchen door. I picked red roses from her front gate and made ceremonial baths with the petals. These were talisman of her home magic, the place that nourished her to help her create her art, devotion to her craft.
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I visited a traveling exhibit of Georgia O’Keefe’s, not just of her paintings but her clothing and art supplies. She worked in a personally curated uniform and, for me, to see the garments that draped over her body as she made art was more moving than the pieces themselves. The shoulder seams of linen held form on a clear mannequin, the room appeared to have her wardrobe as ghosts hovering in glass cases waiting for her mortal body to fill them again.
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At Graceland, the floor to ceiling, seemingly endless gold record hallways are impressive, but when I think back on my visits I remember the perfectly groomed lush white carpet room flanked with two peacock stained glass windows to the right of the front door. I envision Elvis’ bare feet sinking into that marshmallow floor after he comes down the stairs, a soft landing for a soft hearted boy.
The alchemy of inspiration & expression to creation is art. We all live it, in the ways that we adorn ourselves with clothing and the books that we keep on our shelves, the words we choose to say and not say, the stories we tell each other and ourselves. We all create art, everyday, all day long. To pause, wonder, notice and collect and then to reorder these into a deliberate structure through forms and tools we are drawn to, that is closer to what spirit calls art (I feel).
Possibly because art is something that we can all do, it isn’t valued in a highly reverent way. The best supporters of artists are usually artists themselves. Yet to surrender to the inspiration, to pause and collect those liminal threads whenever they arrive and then organize them through paint or potions, song or weaving, photographs or performance, this is the holy work. This is Art.
I don’t want to take up time here arguing about an old subject, because the discussion always leaves me a drained, pathetic martyr. So I’ll just say this: throughout history we have put holy work, works rich in values, on the end of the spectrum furthest away from where the other form of value lives. We have value currency that is an agreed upon value exchange: coins. Yet we actively do not value the holy works with value of coins. Why is that? SMDH
To be The Fool and know this historical value inconsistency exists and still step forward into the primordial abyss with your holy work supplies tied in a knapsack over your shoulder, is a brave act. Maybe this is a part of the layers of Leo: creative and brave because this isn’t an easy world for either, never really has been. Leo as the heart and hearth of the zodiac, the central source of inspiration, the lure of the gold, the joy of the story, this is July. Let there be ART.
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My family is a Fool family. We create and we navigate the value spectrum with how we are creative at both ends. The work that we do: My husband is a songwriter and musician. His devotion to his craft has lasted his entire life: all of his adulthood and most of his childhood. He has Venus in Capricorn in the first house, trine his Taurus moon and he hasn’t had it easy even though he is a natural artist with his Libra midheaven. I am a multimedia artist and have been my entire life. I make things for myself, my friends and my life because I desire the jungle of art to be constantly blooming/dying/blooming around me. My Venus is in the 9th house, in Cancer and in mutual reception to my 7th House Taurus Moon. My work, all of it, is mundane and holy simultaneously. My craft of reading astrology is another way of translating spirit, through words and storytelling. The use of images and inspiration dovetails into what I pause/notice/wonder/collect in a reading. This act is a holy work.
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I’ve said in many interviews: “My favorite thing about astrology are the astrologers.”
I know, from a lifetime of living the life of an artist, how much devotion, faith, work, self doubt, judgement, joy, uncertainty, freedom, channeling, connection, isolation, expression, poverty and riches comes from living a life where you CREATE. Especially if you are creating something out of your own self, like a songwriter or comedian. The crafter of words are the most mystical to me because you are starting from zero and building an entire framework. At least, with astrology, you’re starting in the arena of a natal chart: A symbol of consensus that you insert symbols and extract meaning.
This is my pause to extract the meaning out of the symbols in my own life, my own creations, my own chart, my own moment in time. I am currently working through The Artist’s Way and finding it helpful to put guardrails around my creative rivulets so that they become a river. I know the potential of what I have to surrender and give freely to this world. I also know that what I have to offer is of value. This is me sharing with you that I am vacillating between these two ends on the spectrum, trying to find my current place. I am wondering about the stories that haunt me in order to be told, the connections I am designed to be for others and the ways that the spirits are attempting to find form, through and in my life.
What story is haunting you?