libra I - the artist
Cardinal air: initiation, commitment, artistry.
Every artwork requires both sacrifice and desire.
Venus and the Moon.
The Museum of Atheism
Cardinal air: wild foxes, psychedelic spores, freezing air.
On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan
artmaking in fiction
Cardinal air: harmony, nourishment, artists
I’m thinking about art about artmaking. My own process is in disarray at the moment, and I am finding solace and guidance in the work of other artists grappling with these questions.
virgo Iii - bruise violet
Mutable earth: roses, funerary plants, secrets.
The sweetness of Venus, with the fast movement of Mercury, speeds up the border between ripeness and rot, and between freshness and decay.
ten of pentacles
Mutable earth: Homecoming, mortality, transition
This card feels like a hopeful and homely card to pull - it gives a sense of things being in their rightful place - but the ten gives a sense of the next transition to be to something else, another stage of life. For some of us, that transition is into the realm beyond life, and the spectre of death haunts this card and decan.
Hungry Ghosts
Mutable earth: reality blur, possession, bodies.
The film unspools like a dream. The actors slip in and out of character. It isn’t always clear which parts of their histories belong to them, and which to the characters they’re playing. Artifice and performance are made visible but also blurred.
virgo Ii - blackberrying
Mutable earth: blackberries, ripeness and rot, thresholds, brambles, boundaries.
Virgo II is about late summer slipping into autumn. Melancholy and heavy ripeness. Delicious fruits that mark the end of the harvest.
virgo I – the craft
Mutable earth: mint, clarity, lamplight, ancient traditions
This atmosphere is guided by Mercurial movement, freshness, and clarity. It is the clarity and coolness of mint tea on your tongue.
showing up
Mutable earth: the craft, inner circle, art
But the film is also about the daily grind of showing up. Showing up to your job when you want to work on your art. Showing up for your art when you’re exhausted from your job.
ritual as artwork
Mutable earth: tiny cauldron, communal rituals, the unexpected
Water in three vessels – a cauldron, a glass, and a jug, hit at regular intervals with water poured between them to change the pitch of the notes and traffic as a background carpet of sound.
Ceremony Podcast Season two, Episode one: may ngo
In the first episode of season two, I have the pleasure of speaking with writer, editor, and playwright May Ngo. I talked to May about the process of writing her first novel, the whiteness of crime fiction, the traumas of academia, and how pregnancy is a Tower moment.
The Art of Deer Stalking
Fixed fire: blades forged in fire, revenge, steadfastness
For the proper adherence to ritual we had shaved our hair ultra-close, and smeared on a square of silver zinc.
Oceanic Feelings
Cardinal water: oceanic feelings, water, psychoanalysis, intimacy.
I was an adult when I learned to swim, and I think that is why water is troubling and desirable to me, and why it appears in so many of my dreams and visions.
strangeness in the lake
Cardinal water: strange tides, lovers, deep waters
This is a story written as a liminal space, but this intensifies, rather than diminishes the terror.
The Sky Became the Perfect Colour and Back Again
Mutable air: the inner sky, imagination, psychosis
The water came in waves and washed gold summer through her bones. He was above her again, his hair deep silk on her face.
The tender antagonist
Mutable air: internal contradictions, tenderness, creative solutions.
The relief of facing something is so much greater than the temporary balm of running away.