Aries II: Prism
Cardinal fire: lighting the flame, calling in unconscious desires, light beyond the visible spectrum
Atmosphere: Prism
Plant: Saint John’s Wort
Dates: 31 March - 10 April
Tarot: 3 of Wands
Planet: Sun
The prism captures light and uses it to transform what can be seen.
It is a form of practical magic that can light the deck below ship without causing fires, fill a murky room with sunlight, and split white light into a rainbow in your hand.
Kening Zhu’s illustration is exquisite, showing both shadow and light, white and prismatic colour.
Katy Kelleher, theorist of colour, describes why and how a prism works:
From a physics perspective, white is all the wavelengths of visible light seen at once. It’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, beamed into our eyes at one moment, melded to form white. Snowdrifts look white because they are made of millions of tiny translucent ice crystals.
The sun shines on the ice crystals, and blinds us with its whiteness.
Aries II is a decan illuminated by the sun. It is about solar power, star quality, and the glimmer of optimism that stirs us from depression.
Warmth, cheer, and clear daylight represent this decan, and we can turn our faces towards it, allowing our cheeks to flush with heat, our muscles to soften, our hearts to beat. This is a doubly solar decan; suffused with heat and light.
Kira Ryberg emphasises the intensity of the sun in this decan, in her 36 Decans Guidebook. She reminds us that the sun is in ‘its exaltation degree, which gives it an even stronger solar power. It is within this decan that a more certain star quality emerge, as does the internal battle with the self.’
Maeg Keane writes about the sun and its integral part in all life on earth, seemingly ‘plucked from the outer freezing firmament and made to be the beating nuclear-fusing alien-heart of our world.
All plants require the sun to nourish them, but some plants are solar in quality. Saint John’s Wort, a solar plant best know for its ability to brighten and cheer and to disperse the persistent effects of melancholy, is known as the plant of light.
At its deepest level of transformation, Saint John’s Wort helps the soul to circulate light through the body and into the earth. Rather than experiencing light as an external and merely physical reality, light works within the Self as a spiritual force which can illumine and anchor the consciousness.”
Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz, ‘Flower Essence Reportory’
Sunlight chases away the shadows and night terrors are burned away into faint mirages.
Instead, there are glittering gifts: a rainbow in your palm, a theatrical spectacle lit by deadlights, the biofluorescence of the natural world beneath a UV torch.
The brown slug is emitting brilliant fluorescent yellow slime as I touch it; the earthworm is revealing twin tracks of turquoise on its belly. What might appear some kind of experiment with psychedelic mushrooms is actually a new way of seeing the world at night: shining ultraviolet torches to reveal the natural biofluorescence of animals, plants and fungi.
ARIES II + THREE OF WANDS
So much of Prism is about trusting the magic of what we can’t yet see, and finding practical ways of bringing in what is outside the visible spectrum; of getting in touch with our unconscious desires.
T. Susan Chang likens this card to the asynchronous nature of the magical process.
This fruitful awaiting, this hopeful expectation, reminds me of what it's like to engage in a magical act - and then stand ready for its successful outcome without forcing the process.'
The Three of Wands in the Wild Unknown deck is a prism. Into an ordinary, monochrome world, a rainbow is opened up; the white light split open and poured into its centre.
More than this, it is also a pocket universe – a realm that operates on its own logic.
Austin Coppock, talking about this decan, describes it as capable of producing micro-universes.
Applied magically, this decan has tremendous power. It is the power to generate the world of your choosing, and to be its sovereign. It is the key to creating pocket realities which do not obey the laws of the collective reality field in which they exist.
– Austin Coppock, ‘Aries II – The Crown’
I can think of no better way to describe a creative project than a pocket universe; a realm that does not obey the laws of collective reality and over which you are sovereign.
Aries II is a decan of sovereignty over your creative and fictional worlds; it invites you to continue the work of Aries I, where you allowed the entire rainbow to converge inside you. Now, you can split it back open into its wild, scattered spectrum, and invite in new desires, new colours, new feelings and see how wild and magical your world can grow.
Creative Spell for Aries II – Prism
(adapted from Diana Rose Harper’s ritual for planetary prayers)
Bring a piece of quartz, crystal, or a prism with you to the ritual. Allow the light to travel through the prism. If you do not have anything like this, you can use an imaginary prismatic object.
Get the body present via some gentle movement.
Let your thoughts do whatever they want for one minute.
Attend to your breath, deepening it and expanding it.
Imagine yourself in a dark, empty space. The surroundings are murky and shadowy. You can’t get a sense of the space.
You see a glimmer of light in the gloom. You move towards it, and see a prism.
This might be a prism below deck on a ship, a prism that distributes light inside an otherwise murky room, deadlights that allow light into an underground vault.
Can you see the ship’s flame refracted in the prism? Or do you see a white light split into a rainbow?
How does it feel once light and colour flood the space?
Let yourself wander the space and feel into the light.
When you are ready, come back out of the space, and feel into your own body once more.
Note down any images or messages that came through during the ritual.
Creative Invitations
Rewilding:
Using prisms as a guide, consider a place in your current work-in-progress where something previously unseen comes into vivid focus for your character(s) or narrator(s). What, or who, might cause this shift? How does it affect the existing piece? How does the piece move from monochrome into vivid colour? Is the daylight metaphorical or literal?
Generating:
Continue the work from the ritual. Imagine a scene about a prismatic light. This might be a prism below deck on a ship, a prism that distributes light inside an otherwise murky room, deadlights that allow light into an underground vault, or a prism that splits white light into a rainbow. How does it feel once the light, and colour, floods the space?
Write a scene where your characters or you are on a night walk where you have a flashlight that reveals colours, shapes, lifeforms, and hidden corners that were otherwise invisible.
Process
Research prisms and their connection to literature and history in order to prepare an artwork, research project, audio essay or other form of creative work.
🜁🜃🜂🜄
Prism syllabus
Maeg, Keane, ‘The Sun, Our Unfixed Star’
Katy Kelleher, ‘All the Whites you Cannot Name’
Patrick Markham, ‘Biofluorescent Nature Walk’
Austin Coppock, 36 Faces
Kira Ryberg, 36 Decans Guidebook
Kim Krans, The Wild Unknown tarot deck
Aries II writing
Aries II scholarship
T. Susan Chang ‘Kingdom of Gold’
Kira Ryberg and Chloe Margarita‘The Golden Crown and the Underground’