Ceremony Podcast Season One, Episode two with stephanie edd
Hard- boiled fiction is also really afflicted with this twisted, and very American, casual bigotry. And it makes me so mad because there are so many great lines and so much extensive writing that Chandler did, and these movies just have so much beautiful writing in them but just have these big problems.
Introduction to Season one: Ceremony and Practice
Welcome to season one of Ceremony, a podcast about storytelling, seasonality, rituals, and dreaming new worlds into being.
The Moon: Excitement of the Unconscious
Mutable water: the unconscious, hallucinations, psychic plane
Rachel Pollock writes that “in divinatory readings the moon indicates an excitement of the unconscious.”
A Spell for Writer’s Block
Fixed water: working through, deep release, breaking open
You can work with this ritual to come back to creative centre whenever you are feeling blocked.
Year Ahead Spreads
Fixed air: future visioning, collective energies
What happens if you think about your projects not in terms of word counts, but in seasons? Could you be guided by a full seasonal cycle, from solstice to solstice, or Samhain to Samhain? Or could you work with your solar return?
Temperance: Genre Alchemy
Fixed fire: alchemy, energy, creative flows
Have you been feeling like you could use a change in your writing routine? Perhaps you would like to find a regular weekly slot to work? Or even something more drastic like a complete change in direction?
Two of Wands: Writing Sabbaticals
Fixed air: portals, balance, opposition
How do you build rest into your writing practice? When do you let the field lay fallow, and when do you let it grow wild?
The Devil: What is Story?
Cardinal earth: ambition, architecture, boundaries
When we read a story, temptation only works when we agree to it. Like the two figures here, we must submit to story.
Five of Pentacles
Cardinal earth: cathedral, winter, resources, the unknown
The Five of Pentacles appears to be about stuckness, and scarcity, but it can teach us a lot about the luminous mysteries.
Ace of Pentacles
Fixed earth: receptivity, plenty, earthly pleasures
If we keep frenetically trying to force our way through the world, we will lose sight of the luscious opportunities being handed down from the clouds.
Eight of Cups
Mutable water: confusion, hidden meanings, the moon, intuition
In this card, the figure doesn't notice the moon, and doesn't seem aware of how its guiding force is helping them on their way. The moon in the Eight of Cups is at once a sliver of waxing crescent moon and a full moon, or perhaps it is an eclipse.
The Hermit
Mutable earth: protection, spaciousness, sacred boundaries
The card in this deck offers so much comfort through that connection, modelling a form of self-knowledge that is formed through consultation of existing traditions, nurtured through understanding our place in a lineage, and strengthened through community.
Nine of Pentacles
Mutable earth: late summer, sexuality, harvest
Her serenity is apparent, the bird sitting peacefully on her head, the armful of produce, her calm view of the field, and a gentle hand on the pentacles, as though she isn’t too attached to them, doesn’t need to control them. There is plenty, she seems to tell us, there will be enough.
The Tower
Cardinal fire: heat, fire opals, intensity
A story is about the moment of unstoppable inevitability of knowledge or action: think of Greek tragedies, folk tales, revolutions, mysteries. Humans are wired to be hungry for these kinds of stories, because they help us to understand a chaotic and sometimes brutal world.
The Hanged One
Mutable water: surrender, liminality, balance, suspension
When we are used to experiencing adrenaline, or the effects of trauma, rest and relaxation can feel counterintuitive: allowing our muscles to relax can give a stronger sensation than our familiar contractions.
Four of Wands
Fixed earth: homecoming, celebration, safety
Fours tend to represent stability and support, in the Modern Witch deck, the four wands have been made into a shelter, gateway, or portal decked with festive foliage.
Three of Cups
Cardinal water: spiritual awakening, coven, love, community
We are already in profound communion with all other humans, and each one of us is capable of the same range of dark and light behaviours, it is a matter of circumstance and context that determines the outcomes.